Insomnia
by Aline Riva
Summary: *Future fic set in 2012 follows on from the FIRST Elm St. movie* Nancy's cousin Vic moves back to Elm Street and is reunited with old friends who were teens around the time of the 1984 murders. Then Freddy finds a way in, planning to kill the last of the Elm St. kids. Can Nancy, trapped in Hell, persuade Freddy to finally put down his razors - in the name of...LOVE? NancyXFreddy
1. Chapter 1

**Insomnia**

* * *

**Author Note:**

**This story is set in 2012, and follows on *only* from the first Elm Street movie, and concerns a group of friends who were teenagers back in 1984 – who recall the murders linked to 'The ghost of Freddy'. **

**I take the back story from the first movie and lead it into the present, taking assumption that at the end of the first movie, Freddy got Nancy. **

**I haven't brought in references to any of the sequels - this is a future fic follow on from The originol 1984 Movie. I'm writing as if 'the events of 1984' in Elm Street was the whole of the story, and this follows on in 2012. **

**So it's a Nightmare on Elm Street 1 future fic book.**

**Also:**

****This story also takes an AU look at the roots of Freddy Krueger and also features a different perspective on the history of the character – and also features a storyline involving a Freddy/Nancy pairing.****

* * *

**About my other Fics: **

**I've written novels in various other movie fandoms too – Home Alone (1&4), Inspector Gadget, Penelope Pitstop, Clockstoppers, Starman...plus many more. But this is my very _first_ Elm Street novel.**

* * *

**Summary:**

**A group of teens who grew up on Elm Street remember the killings of '84 and the rumors that the deaths were caused by 'The Ghost of Freddy'.**

**But the years have rolled by and now it's 2012 and that same group of friends are all in their forties and long since out grown the days when they could be scared by something considered by most to be little more than an urban legend...**

**Then Nancy Thompson's cousin Vic moves back to Elm Street and with the old gang reunited, questions start being asked about the past, mainly about if Rod Lane really _was_ guilty of the murder of his girlfriend Tina Gray.**

**Vic Fox never believed Rod, who he used to hang out with sometimes, could have been capable of murder.**

**And Vic doesn't believe in Freddy Krueger, either...**

**Vic rarely dreams because of chronic insomnia, something he has suffered from since being the victim of a shooting during a vicious robbery a year ago. When he sleeps, it's induced by pills - but he does not dream. **

**But hating the sedatives, he leaves them off more than he should - leading him to fall asleep in the day time, and in these exhausted sleeps his dreams are lucid and Freddy Krueger finds a way back in to the real world, with his glove of razors sharp and ready to catch up with the last of the Elm Street kids who are now long since grown up - and they are about to find out that sometimes, urban legends _DO_ turn out to be true after all...**

* * *

**Rated T.**

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**Warnings.**

**Some scenes of horror, adult situations, some strong language and brief mentions of slash.**

* * *

**Pairings: Freddie/Nancy (yes that pairing _is_ romantic), also two OC pairings, one is slash.**

* * *

**Disclaimer: I own nothing, this is a work of fan fiction.**

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Chapter 1

_He could hear the rainfall as they drove towards Springwood._

It was hitting the windshield while the wipers slashed across the glass, obliterating the droplets as fast as they fell.

As rain hit the windshield and the moving car and the washed out blur of the world beyond it made his eyes feel heavy, he hadn't fought against it:

This was sleep, something that seemed impossible to reach at night – yet now, as they drove in the rain and the passenger seat felt softer as his eyes grew heavier, Vic Fox welcomed it, breathing a sigh as he slipped into a world of peace and rest.

_Sleep had grabbed him quick; he knew he was dreaming at once:_

This was another of those lucid dreams, the kind he only got in the day time when he was snatched off into a _real_ sleep, the kind his mind and his bones had been silently screaming for, needing it for more than a year now. He always welcomed these moments, they were not induced by drugs – this was _real _sleep, bringing _real _dreams...

_It wasn't raining any more._

Over on the sidewalk, as the sun shone down the girls were playing a skipping game, jumping the rope as they chanted a rhyme he recalled from his own childhood:

"_One, Two, Freddie's coming for you..."_

Vic shifted in his sleep, comforted by the softness of the passenger seat as the car moved along.

He was sleeping deeply now, beneath closed lids his eyes moved, following the vivid scene as it unfolded:

_He was eighteen again._

_It was '84 and he'd just got a ride home from Rod Lane._

Rod was a guy he hung out with quite often. He was a bit wild but not_...not what?_

He searched his hazy mind for the answer and found it:_ Not a bad guy..._

He recalled the police had said later that Rod had done something _very_ bad, but right now that was far from his thoughts, it was gone as if the mists of time had swallowed it up.

_Vic got out of the car_.

Rod flashed him a smile.

"See you." He said and Vic nodded.

He had hung around with Rod for a couple of years. They wore the same kind of leather jacket, they even put gel through their dark hair almost identically. They had a lot of similarities but unlike his friend, Vic did _not_ carry a blade...

_And he was enjoying this dream_.

It was great to be back on Elm Street with his cousin Nancy living just a short walk up the street; it was great to be young again, to be a teenager in a time when he felt like nothing could hurt him.

Vic had been afraid of nothing back in those days, because _real_ fear came from living life and getting out there and having experiences that brought with them the realisation that no one is fireproof; only teens lived with eternal optimism simply because they hadn't got out there and tried that harsh cruel place where all the edges were razor sharp- that place called _real life_ where reality was tough and only the strong survived...

_But right now, he was eighteen again._

_He had his life ahead of him and all his hopes and dreams were still intact._

_Nothing had turned bad yet... _

Vic watched as Rod drove away.

And then he turned to push the gate open to walk up the path to his front door.

Those girls were still jumping that rope, but as he watched them he blinked, wondering why the world seemed to be slowing down.

The girl's chanted words also slowed and became almost hypnotic, ringing in his ears as they continued to jump the rope:

"_Three, Four, better lock your door... Five, Six grab your crucifix...Seven...Eight...Gonna stay up late..."_

He gripped the gate a little harder.

A creeping cold was spreading through his bones and it felt like the chill of a morgue.

_The girls had dropped the rope._

_He wanted to shut his eyes but he couldn't do it._

They turned around.

_Each one had four slash marks through their clothing and blood was seeping through._

Their eyes rolled white and as they spoke words rasped dry from dead throats:

"_Nine, Ten...Never sleep again..."_

Vic woke with a sharp jolt, gasping for air as he sat up straight in the car.

The windshield wipers were still swiping at the windows as they turned into Elm Street.

"Did you have a bad dream?" Trish asked him.

She turned her head and looked at him, the blonde hair that framed her face made her look pretty despite the weary, hardened look in her dark eyes that said she had long since tired of offering him kindness and sympathy because of his sleep disorder.

"Sorry honey." Vic said quietly,"I must have dozed off."

"We're here now." Trish said, smiling at him warmly, "Our new house is just up here, on the right..."

_The rain was stopping now._

Vic frowned as he looked out of the window and wondered why they were going past these houses so slowly; he couldn't even feel the car engine any more, it was more like...they were gliding?

_No, he didn't want to think he was still stuck in that dream..._

He looked sharply at Trish.

"_I want to get out of the car right now!"_

She smiled again, oblivious to the fear in his eyes and the way his voice had risen in panic.

"Not yet." She said sweetly, "Look who's here to see you..."

And she turned back to the road ahead.

_He stared at the wiper as it switched back and forth, back and forth – then instead of the wiper, a razor shaved the droplets from the glass with a flick of a gloved finger._

Freddy Krueger was smiling a twisted smile of a maniac through the rain covered windshield, his burned face was up against it and then he raised his gloved hand and smashed it through the glass.

As Freddy lashed out, Vic dodged a swipe of his glove.

He swiped at him again and Vic was yelling for help as he fought with the maniac amid a shower of broken glass.

He was grabbing at the glove, trying to hold the knives back. As Krueger snapped the blades together and the razors edged closer to his face Vic grabbed hold of his sweater, but the striped fabric crumbled in his hand and rotting flesh revealed itself, crawling with maggots.

"_HELP ME!"_ Vic yelled as he struggled and fought for his life while the maniac pinned him to his seat.

* * *

_Now someone had him by the wrists._

His hands were being pinned and he still had his eyes closed as he waited for the moment when the knives sliced through his body.

"_STOP IT, VIC!"_

He snapped his eyes open sharply on hearing his wife's voice.

All the fight went out of him and he slumped back in the seat as he saw Trish standing beside the open passenger door. She was holding him in his seat, trying to stop him from ... doing what?

_Oh yes. It had just come back to him:_

He had just had a nightmare, made a fool of himself and _that_ was why she was glaring at him like she wanted to murder him...

As she let go of him his whole body felt weak as the adrenaline left him.

He was pale and breathless and a trickle of sweat ran down his face.

Vic ran his fingers through dark hair and looked at her with wide, sky blue eyes.

_"I'm sorry, honey...bad dream..."_ As he spoke his voice was shaky and he nervously glanced at the windshield again, but it was'nt broken, it didn't even have a single scratch...

"I don't know why that happened." He said in a hushed voice, "It was crazy...I don't dream about stuff like that...I just _don't_..."

"_Stuff like what?"_

Vic shook his head.

He had never believed in the urban legend of the ghost of Krueger and he was'nt about to admit to that dream now they were parked here outside their new home; they were back on Elm Street after more than twenty five years absence...

Trish put her hand on her hip and looked down at the drive way as she took in a slow, deep breath to compose herself.

_Then she felt her face growing hot as she glance around and saw curtains twitch, and a curious couple passing by who had stopped to stare at the weird guy freaking out in the car decided they had seen enough and carried on walking up the street..._

Trish looked back at her husband and shook her head.

"We've just arrived at the _new hous_e, Vic! _We're in the drive way!_ Couldn't you have had your freak out behind closed doors? You haven't even got out of the car and half the neighborhood thinks you're nuts already!"

Vic took off his seat belt and got out of the car.

He still felt shaky but if it showed he was sure Trish either hadn't noticed, didn't care or both.

"_Sorry."_ He said again.

She pulled the house keys from her purse and shoved them into his hand.

"Thank God I had the furniture moved here last week! Now all you have to do is go in there and make yourself at home! Is that _easy_ enough for you?"

And he knew that look in her eyes; it was the same one he had seen eighteen months back when she had found out about his affair with his secretary. He was sure she would never forgive him – even _after_ he had been shot and almost killed by a car jacker six months later, Trish had _not_ put the past behind them.

_And now it was starting to dawn on him that she never would let go of it._

"I'm sorry." He said as he looked at her,"For _everything_. And yes, I think I will go inside now."

Trish watched as he walked up to the front door, but hung back, letting him go in alone, while she turned her attentions to unpacking all the stuff in the back of the car.

She knew he was far from happy but right now, unpacking was priority and she hoped her absence as he walked into their new home would serve as a reminder that this was how things would be from now on – their closeness, as far as she was concerned, was gone forever because some things just _couldn't_ be forgiven...

* * *

Vic went upstairs, not bothering to take a look around because he had been over to the house many times before they had moved in and seeing the furniture in place wouldn't exactly be enough to distract him and shake the memory of that dream.

He went into the bedroom, gave a sigh as he looked at the wide, soft bed that looked so comfortable as he thought how cold it would be, lying there night after night while Trish kept her back turned in anger, then he took off his jacket and kicked off his shoes and sank back onto the bed.

As his head touched the pillow he closed his eyes, but this time sleep had escaped him.

_It always did when he wanted to find it._

He thought back to the days before the shooting – back then, he took for granted the fact that he could just close his eyes and sleep when ever he wanted to.

Vic's thoughts were edging closer to the memory of the night some crazy guy with a gun tried to rob him and then shot him twice, shattering bone in his shoulder and then lodging a bullet in his brain that had ensured his life would never be the same again.

Then he shoved those thoughts away because those memories disturbed him almost as much as his own imagination, dreaming up that image of Freddy Krueger in a striped sweater with a burned face and razors on a glove, smashing through the windshield of the car...

Vic opened his eyes again and looked around the light and airy room:

This room was full of clean, bright furniture. The sheer nets that hung at the windows diffused the sunlight and made the whole place seem restful. There was nothing in here that seemed to beckon shadows into the mind, nothing that could stir the imagination in such a way to bring on bad dreams.

It struck him as ironic that the shooting had been the most horrific incident in his life - and yet a bad dream about a long dead murderer who was the stuff of urban myth could frighten him even more than that. _How could a fantasy be more terrifying than reality?_

"_You don't exist."_ Vic stated aloud_,"You're dead."_

And then he closed his eyes, feeling drained, shattered and in need of sleep.

The sleep still refused to come and he knew he could change that if he took the sleepers from his jacket and popped one, but didn't want to wake up feeling hungover, so he left the pills and rested without sleep, wishing he could reach for it and grab that rest that so eluded him, while he felt sure _anything_ was better than sleep forced by pills that would see him wake to blank white walls, after a sleep of blank white wall dreamlessness.

* * *

Trish had just taken the last box from the car.

She set it down in the hallway and was about to close the front door when she heard a shout from a house across the street.

"_Hey!"_ A guy called out, _"Is Vic home yet?"_

Trish got the feeling she knew that voice.

As she turned around she saw him, he stopped to wait for a car to pass and then he dashed across the road and cleared the low fence with a leap and landed on the grass, skidded and slipped over on the damp lawn.

"_Ouch..."_ He complained as he picked himself up.

Trish stood in the doorway with her arms folded as she glared at him.

"_Hi Harvey." _She said coldly.

And Harvey, whose jeans were now mud and grass stained, had turned towards the front door.

Then he saw who was standing there and his smile faded and he stared at her:

_The last thing he had heard, Vic had been seeing his secretary; he thought he was planning to leave Trish... They had never got on, even back when they were all growing up together. Even when they were teenagers, Vic's life had been made a misery by the quarrels he had with Trish – and she had done her best to break him up from his friends, too..._

"Oh Hi..." Harvey said quietly, "Nice to see you back in the neighborhood, Trish. Is Vic home?"

"He's upstairs." Trish replied, "I think he wanted a lie down but I doubt if he's asleep. You might as well go up."

"Thanks."

Harvey entered the house, but as he passed her she called him back.

"I didn't know Vic was in touch with you- or anyone around here. He told you we were moving in today?"

"He sent me an email about a month ago; he told me he was moving back to Elm Street. I've been watching and waiting ever since! I couldn't believe it when he said he was moving in across the street!"

"And he told you about everything _else _that's happened?" She wondered.

Harvey blinked as he felt his face flushing. He hated lying about anything, but he didn't want to mention the affair...

"Um...well...he used to mail me sometimes but then I just didn't hear from him for almost a year."

And he ran his fingers through his light brown hair and breathed a sigh of relief, feeling as if he'd just dodged a bullet with that reply.

"_Something happened."_

His eyes widened as he looked back at Trish.

He was sure his face was growing hotter by the second – damned right something happened; he knew all about it, he knew _everything_ about the girl who had made his best friend so very happy, as Vic had said in his own words, _for the first time in his life..._

Harvey shifted awkwardly as he looked reluctantly back at Trish.

"Um...no...I don't think he said much about anything really..."

Trish lowered her voice.

_"Vic was shot by a car jacker a year ago."_

Harvey's eyes grew wider as he stared at her.

"What? I...I don't get this, why didn't he tell me? Is he okay?"

Trish gave a heavy sigh.

"He's okay now – if you can call the way he is okay...he's changed a _lot_, Harvey. He's bad tempered sometimes, he never seems to know when to keep his mouth shut, he's always getting into arguments- and on top of that he can't sleep properly any more. He's hard to get along with, too - he's had to hire some extra staff to run the company because he just can't keep it together like he used to. It's brain damage. He was shot in the shoulder and the head and this is what it's done to him. He's still the same guy at first glance, but you'll see what I mean when you spend some time with him."

Harvey's thoughts were fixed firmly on his close friend now; Vic had been his best pal since high school and knowing all he did, he just wanted to be with him to reassure himself he really had got through this okay.

"It's not a big deal to me if he's changed." Harvey stated, "As long as he's made it, he's still around, that's good enough for me."

"He's upstairs." Trish repeated, and then she turned her back, picked up the box and headed off towards the kitchen.

Harvey wasted no time, going up the stairs right away in search of his best friend who had kept too many secrets from him for far too long.

* * *

When he heard the tap on the bedroom door Vic gave a sigh and slowly opened his eyes.

"What now?"

And Harvey walked in and shut the door behind him, looking tearfully at Vic.

"_Why didn't you tell me?"_

His voice was hushed as he sat down on the bed and looked into the eyes of his closest friend.

Vic stared at him: _He had not been expecting Harvey to come over the minute he moved in, he was'nt expecting him to be so upset, either..._

"You should have told me." Harvey said softly, reaching out and putting his hand gently on Vic's cheek, "I would have been here for you! I would have helped you, Vic! Why did you shut me out like that?"

Vic was still looking at him, feeling too stunned to speak. He had expected his wife to walk into the room, not his best friend who he hadn't seen for a long, long time...

Harvey blinked back tears. He spoke again as he ran his hand over Vic's hair and looked anxiously into his eyes.

"Just say something, Vic... I need to know you're okay!"

"I'm okay now." Vic told him, "It's not been easy but I'm okay...I'm still here."

Harvey saw pain in his friend's eyes and he gave a quiet sob as he put his arms around him and hugged him tightly.

He was squeezing him and not letting go and the longer he held on the easier it became for Vic to reach up and hold on to him too, returning the gesture.

But Vic's hug was brief and then he let go, pushing Harvey away gently.

_"I'm okay now."_ He repeated.

Harvey's eyes clouded with confusion.

"I don't think you are," Harvey told him, "I know about what happened with you... I think it's terrible!"

"Oh, the shooting... yeah, I was going to tell you about that."

Harvey's eyes grew wider as he looked at him in alarm.

"Not just that," He exclaimed, "_You're still with Trish? I thought you'd planned your escape?"_

And Vic managed a smile.

"Yeah, I'm still with Trish. She still pushes me around and gets her own way and now she knows I've had an affair she hates me more than ever- so nothing's really changed around here."

Harvey gave a sigh.

"She was never the right one for you! I can't remember a single time when you two ever stopped fighting. You should have got me involved, Vic!"

He looked wearily at his best friend.

"And I've lost count of the times Trish has pulled you into quarrels, Harvey! She used to scream and yell at you – and you didn't need to get involved in any of it. But she looked after me after I got shot, I guess I should be grateful for that, she did a lot for me."

"And what else? Broke you up from that girl you wanted to run away with?"

His words reminded Vic of everything that had happened; he had just summed up everything in a single statement and made his heart ache with his honesty.

"For once in my life I thought I was onto a good thing," He told him, "I loved her, she felt the same way about me and it looked like it was going to work out."

"_And Trish broke you up."_

Vic nodded.

"It got nasty. She told her that I made a habit of being unfaithful, she told her she wasn't the only girl I was sleeping with. It was bullshit but she believed her and after that I couldn't go on with her because I felt like the trust we had was gone. So Trish won."

"You could have walked away."

Vic gave another sigh.

"It wasn't that easy, Harvey. She made me feel guilty, I felt sorry for her -"

"_Like you always do."_

"And then I was driving home one night and some guy waves me over to the side of the road and says he needs a ride to the hospital because his wife's having a baby. So I let him get in the car and then he pulls a gun and asks for my keys and my wallet and then..."

Vic stopped, recalling the struggle in the car as the rain lashed down on that stormy night. _In his memory the struggle ended with the flash of gun fire and then he knew nothing until he woke up in the hospital._

"I don't want to talk about it. I can barely remember much about it any way."

"But the cops caught the guy?"

Vic shook his head.

"It was dark, it was raining, the guy was wearing a rain coat and the hood was pulled up. I barely got a look at his face. He said something to me but I can't remember what it was. I've tried to remember but it's gone...he said it right after he got into the car..."

Vic closed his eyes, wishing he could shut out all that remained of the memory of that night.

Then he looked back at Harvey and smiled.

"It's in the past. What matters now is this - I'm back home and you and me can hang out together like the old days again."

And Harvey smiled too.

"I'm sorry you've been through so much." He told him, "But it's great to have you home, Vic."

And then he hugged him again, thinking of nothing but the fact that his best friend had been through hell and made it out the other side, and made it home to where he belonged, back on Elm Street where they both grew up...

* * *

It was dark save for the flames that licked at the walls.

The boiler room was hotter than Hell.

_This was Freddy Krueger's Hell_.

He traced a razor down a row of pipes, the contact sent an ear splitting screech through the room and he closed his fingers as he pulled away from the pipes, bunching the razors on his gloved hand together as he lowered them, standing there facing the wall, his burned face half shielded by his hat.

He wanted to turn around but rage and hatred fed him in the worst kind of way, in the sweetest way that fed his madness too and he stayed turned to that wall with his knives lowered as she approached him.

Then she spoke up and her words felt as if they had the power of arrows, flying swift through his body, puncturing his soul.

"_I know what you did, Freddy!"_

And he turned sharply, eyes blazing as he looked at Nancy Thompson.

She stood before him as a vision of youth and beauty; his knives could not harm her because she had no fear of him, even after he had killed her friends and her parents too. He had grabbed her and dragged her off alive to this nowhere place, this burning hell of his own making.

She didn't know how long she had been here because in this other world time stood still, but she knew something else for sure because she had felt it- Freddy had entered into the dream of someone so close she felt as if there was a tie to her own blood.

"What did you do?" She demanded again.

Freddy took in a slow breath and stepped closer, in the flickering light of the flames that lived in the walls of this place his scorched face looked even uglier as hatred burned in his eyes.

He raised his gloved hand, delicately extending a long razor that hovered a fraction from her face.

"There are more, Nancy! I have souls to collect!"

Nancy looked into his eyes and as he looked back at her, saw her flawless face and her long dark hair, the flush in her cheeks and the glow of her youth- all signs of life – he felt resentful all over again.

But Nancy showed no fear.

"I've been here a long time." She stated, _"And you showed me the truth! Admit it, say it aloud!"_

Freddy's eyes darkened as his face twisted into a mask of rage.

"_I should slice you in two for saying that!"_ He roared.

"But you won't." She said quietly.

And she kept her gaze locked with his as she placed her hand on his striped sweater, pushing firmly as she stepped aside, away from his closeness.

"It's not too late." She told him, "If you stop this, if you take off the glove and speak the truth –"

"_I will NEVER do what you say!" _He said darkly, _"Never!"_

Nancy took a step backwards, her pale dress becoming translucent as she stood like an angel framed by the burning walls of Hell.

"Take off the glove." She repeated, and she shimmered and vanished from sight, Freddie's eyes stayed fixed on the spot where she had been standing.

"_NO!"_ He yelled, but only his own voice echoed back at him as he stood in the semi gloom of the burning boiler room.

_Yes, this was his own personal Hell._

_And Hell had just become worse because Nancy had left him alone here..._

Freddy looked down at the glove on his hand, the knives shone in the hellish light and he thought about the souls he had claimed with the knives that commanded such dark power:

_He was the monster who stalked dreams._

_He was the killer who no one could stop._

_He was tortured inside and screaming for release, too._

_But only Nancy knew the truth._

_Nancy knew the real story of Freddy Krueger, the man who was burned to death by vigilantes._

_But it was too late to put anything right now; nothing could be changed because the knives had claimed souls._

_He had damned himself in so many ways that it was too late for the truth to offer any kind of redemption._

_His secret would stay secret just as the glove would stay on his hand._

_Pain had been his close companion for far too long to change anything now..._

He raised his hand and spread out his fingers and smiled as the knives reflected the fires of Hell:

_Yes, the glove would stay on._

_He had more souls to collect..._


	2. Chapter 2

**Author Note: This chapter contains an A/U spin on the roots of Freddy 'the monster'.**

Chapter 2

_Vic had talked with Harvey. They had talked for more than an hour_.

Vic had told Harvey several times before he left that he didn't need to be left alone to sleep, because he couldn't sleep, not when he _wanted_ to. But Harvey had missed the point and glanced at his tired eyes and said he knew for _sure _he would get some sleep when he left him alone, because he looked so tired.

And after Harvey had walked out of the room Vic had breathed a sigh and grabbed his jacket and taken out the bottle of sleeping pills.

He had hesitated, knowing he hated the feel of waking from a dreamless, forced sleep – but thanks to the bullet that had smashed into his skull and caused bleeding in his brain, he would never sleep normally again...and going without it too long would slowly drive him nuts and turn him into a wreck.

So he went through to the bathroom, took one pill, drank it down with water and then got back on the bed and closed his eyes.

_The pill took a while to kick in._

As he waited for sleep to force itself upon him, he closed his eyes and thought about everything he had talked about with Harvey – he had said wanted him to come over for drinks tomorrow night, he said Melanie would love to see him too.

Harvey and Melanie had been together since High School, Mel had moved to the house across the street with Harvey after they got married and they had raised their kids there. It had been Harvey's parent's house. His parents had passed away and the two kids he had with Melanie were now grown up and both moved out with independent lives of their own.

Vic wondered what his kids own would have been like, but he had never had the chance to find out, because Trish could not have children.

That was something that made his heart ache because if they had been happy together over the years like Harvey and Mel, it wouldn't have been so hard to deal with. _But when he looked back on his life, Vic knew he had too many regrets and it all felt too late to do a damned thing about it now..._

That was his last thought as the sleeper kicked in and finally he slept in a dreamless place, as white and blank as the walls of the bedroom.

* * *

When Harvey walked up the path to his own front door, he had a big smile on his face.

"Mel!" He called out, "Vic's back!"

And he entered the house, crossing over the yellow porch and stepping through the open door where his wife was dressed in old jeans and a faded t shirt as she knelt on the floor repainting the wall, covering over old faded cream woodchip paper with a shade of white tinted with lavender.

She got up and looked into his eyes and smiled.

"That's great news! How is he?"

And Harvey's smile faded.

"He's still with Trish. It didn't work out with the new girlfriend. And the poor guy got robbed a year ago-some guy tried to car jack him and shot him in the head!"

Melanie gave a gasp.

"Oh no, is he okay?"

"Well not really." Harvey told her, "How can he be? He's _still_ with Trish!"

Melanie looked kindly into the eyes of her husband, who was _not_ the smartest guy in the world.

"No, Harv! I mean, is he okay because he got _shot?_"

"Oh, yeah...I think so. His wife thinks he's changed but he seems the same to me, she said he can't sleep properly any more. He _did_ look tired."

And sadness clouded his eyes, but it soon vanished as he smiled again.

"But at least he's back in Springwood! It's so good to have him home, Mel!"

And then he frowned, staring at her as he reached out and took hold of a strand of her long brown hair that had come loose from her ponytail.

"Have you put weird lilac streaks in your hair? You haven't done that since '86 when you put that _blue thing_ in your fringe..."

She laughed.

"It's paint, that's all! It'll wash out."

Harvey smiled as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer.

"How about I wash it out for you? I just slipped in the wet grass. We could _both_ use a shower."

And then he kissed her and kissed her again as he ran his hands over her hips.

Melanie laughed as she pulled back.

"Shut the front door!" She exclaimed, "We don't want the whole street watching us making out like teenagers!"

And Harvey leaned in for another kiss, pushing the door shut at the same time.

* * *

It was dark when the sound of the bedroom door closing jolted Vic wide awake.

He felt hungover from the sleeping pill and raised his head slowly from the pillow, wishing he could sink back to it, but he knew the power of the medication had worn off now.

"Thanks a lot." He murmured as he sat up, "I won't get back to sleep again tonight..."

Then he glanced at the time illuminated on the clock beside the bed.

"At least I've made it till almost eleven thirty!"

"Sorry." Trish said quietly, "I didn't mean to wake you."

As she got into bed, he leaned over her.

He caught that look in her eyes that said she wasn't about to welcome an embrace from him but he kissed her cheek and she turned her head, kissing him briefly too.

"What are you doing?" She wondered.

"Having a shower." He told her as he got up, "Then I'm getting comfortable in a bathrobe and going downstairs. If I'm lucky I might fall asleep in front of the TV for an hour."

And he headed for the bathroom, then remembered what Harvey had said to him before he left.

"Oh by the way – Harvey invited us over for drinks tomorrow night."

"_Fine."_ Was all she said, and then she turned on her side, turning her back to him.

* * *

Twenty minutes later after a hot shower, Vic was downstairs with TV turned down low.

His hair was still damp and he felt relaxed after spending time under the hot water, but even lying on the sofa watching late night TV when there was nothing on it that really sparked his interest did nothing to help him sleep.

He turned the TV down as the time ticked on, gave up watching the clock and thinking how crazy it was that the rest of the world could sleep while he stayed wide awake and he sat there in the gloom, with the lamp turned off, watching as the room was lit up by nothing but the flickering light from the TV.

_The house was silent._

_He could hear the clock ticking on the wall._

_He felt sure if he listened hard enough he could almost hear the rest of the rest of the world sleeping peacefully under the cover of the night sky._

It felt so crazy sometimes - it felt as if he was the only one who couldn't sleep, the only one wide awake while everyone else lay sleeping.

Vic thought about Trish, fast asleep upstairs.

Then he thought about Harvey and Mel, across the street and peacefully sharing a warm bed and much closeness as they rested through the night.

Then Vic thought back to the days when he was recovering from the shooting:

About a month after he came out of the hospital, in the days when being sleepless started to drive him slightly nuts, he had gone upstairs into the bedroom and opened the window wide and then blown a whistle something like a dozen times before Trish had taken it away from him and demanded to know what the hell he was playing at.

He had looked at her and simply said:

"_I can't sleep and I'm going crazy. I just wanted everyone else around here to know how it feels."_

And Trish had glared at him and true to her usual cold hearted response to his unhappiness, had called him an _asshole..._

He closed his eyes and gave a sigh at the memory, wishing she had been more understanding.

Sometimes, despite being married for so long, the truth crept up on him that he was, despite her company, alone in life in most ways.

_This was one of those nights when that thought was heavy on his mind._

Somewhere a dog was barking.

Far off he heard people laughing and talking as they made their way home, walking along Elm Street after a late night out.

He heard a car pass by and then the world fell silent again.

The TV was still flickering but his eyes felt heavy now.

He closed them.

_And finally, just before three thirty in the morning, Vic fell asleep once more..._

* * *

She walked along Elm Street with her head down; she walked briskly with a purpose thinking only of her destination.

It was the middle of the night and she had to move _fast_ because this was the time to shift dimension, this was dreaming time.

She was heading for Vic's house.

And then someone grabbed at Nancy's arm.

She caught her breath and turned sharply to see her mother standing there.

"_Whose side are you on?"_

Those words wounded her to her soul.

_Freddy had ripped open her loyalties as sure as his razors could slice guts._

Sometimes she thought it would have been better for her if he had killed her instead of leaving her like this, bound by his power between worlds...

"That's not fair, Mom!" She exclaimed, "You have no right to say that to me!"

Her mother's eyes widened.

"I have every right! That bastard killed me, he killed your friends too, Nancy!"

_"And you killed him!"_ Nancy said accusingly.

Her mother stiffened at the uncomfortable reminder those words brought home and she stared at her daughter.

"He was a child murderer!"

"_IT WASN'T HIM!"_

Nancy's voice echoed around the stillness of Elm Street.

Her mother froze as she carried on staring at her daughter, wondering if her time bound to Freddy's realm had turned her insane.

"You _know _what he did."

Now anger blazed in Nancy's eyes as she leaned closer to her mother.

Her voice was dropped to a whisper and she spoke clearly, stating facts:

"The cops were under pressure to find the Springwood serial killer. Krueger was put in the frame because the glove was found at a factory, in the boiler room – that factory was _owned_ by Fred Krueger! His business had gone under and he was selling the place! Anyone could have hidden that glove there, Mom - anyone! After he was framed and then let go because of a mistake with the search warrant, _after_ you and the other parents burned him alive – the _real_ Springwood killer was found dead, dead from natural causes –"

"_No!"_ Her mother said sharply, _"No, Nancy, this is Freddy and his lies-"_

"No, mother - _you _listen to _me!_" Nancy looked hard at her, spelling out the words her mother had long since tried to block out:

"When they found the body, the dead man had a glove in his pocket, a glove fitted with long, sharp razors and those razors were confirmed to be the murder weapon used in the killing of at _least_ three of the Elm Street kids! He was an escaped lunatic who was sleeping rough at the empty factory. He kept his murder weapons there; he slept there when the place was shut down because he had no where else to go. That's _why_ the forensic evidence pointed back to Freddy's factory! When the cops found out the truth it was covered up because they'd already let the world think Fred Krueger was the killer!"

Her mother's face paled as she stood there in the moonlight staring at her daughter.

"_I know what you did."_ Nancy stated, _"You killed the wrong man! That's why Freddy came back to kill your kids, you and the other parents! You burned him alive and he was an innocent man! You turned him into a monster!"_

Her mother drew in a shaken breath and placed her hand over her mouth as she shook her head.

She stifled a sob and then straightened up, ready to speak in her own defence.

"You don't know any of this for sure, Nancy..."

"Yes I do."

"_She knows because I told her."_

Nancy's mother looked up sharply to see her husband step out of the darkness.

"_You_ told her this?"

Nancy looked to her father.

"Dad told me everything. When he passed away he reached me and he told me that everything Freddy had showed me was the truth. _The dead speak the truth, Mom_."

Nancy's father looked back at his wife.

"_Krueger's not lying."_ He told her, _"You did kill the wrong man."_

Her mother drew in a sharp breath, wishing she could wipe out the suspicion that had been at the back of her mind even before she and the other parents had fired the boiler room with Krueger inside it:

_There had been no certain evidence of is guilt, nothing concrete..._

"That can't be true!" She exclaimed, "How, _how _can that be true? He killed your daughter's friends, he killed me –"

"He's a vengeful spirit now." He stated, "He's been fed by hate – the hate of you and everyone else who caused his death, and the hate of the whole town when we arrested him and falsely accused him...he's a demon of his own making - but only because _we_ put him there in the first place with our actions."

And Nancy stood and watched as her mother started to cry and her father embraced her.

As he held her he glanced back at Nancy.

"_It's all in your hands now."_ He whispered.

Nancy nodded, and her parents faded invisible, then disappeared back into the ether.

* * *

She pushed open the gate and walked across the neat lawn and stood by the window.

Nancy felt like a ghost even though Freddy had dragged her off to Hell and held back from killing her.

_She knew he often thought about plunging his knives deep into her body, through her flesh and out the other side, just to know the feel of her._

_Just to penetrate her in a way that would be final, in a way that would ensure his blades were the last sensation she would ever know._

_He thought about it a lot._

_But he wouldn't do it._

_He had held back from it and now she knew he always would._

_She had matched him, she had fought him, she had lost her fear of him..._

And as she stood in the dark, in the dreaming time in 2012 while she knew she was still the same teenager who had been taken from 1984, she did indeed feel like a ghost...

She looked through the glass.

Vic was in there, he was her cousin. He had been around her age back in '84.

He would be in his forties now.

She couldn't see him because the lights were off, but she knew he was there, she was sure of it.

Nancy pressed her hand against the glass. It felt cool beneath her palm and reminded her how close the veil was between this world and the real one, the one she longed to get back to.

"Vic!" She called softly.

Then she tapped on the glass.

_And the hair on the back of her neck began to prickle; it was as if an ice wind had just blown through Elm Street._

Nancy turned her head sharply, eyes widening as she saw Freddy in shadow across the street, his head was bowed and his hat was low and his gloved hand hung idle at his side.

But he knew she was looking at him, he knew it at once and raised his head, his burned features instantly illuminated by the street light.

Nancy turned towards him and slowly shook her head.

"_No."_ She stated.

Freddy's head tilted slightly; he had heard her as sure as he could read her thoughts.

The blades on the end of his glove twitched as his body tensed.

He was thinking about killing somebody tonight. She was sure that person was her cousin Vic.

"_Leave him alone!" _She hissed.

Freddy took a step forward. Then he took another step and then he was pacing, the blades swishing air as he sped up his pace, crossing the street, walking towards the garden...

Nancy reached down into the flower bed and picked up a small rock.

Freddy was running.

"_No you don't!"_ She yelled, and slammed the rock against the glass.

* * *

Vic woke to the sound of the window shattering.

He sat up with a jolt, wide awake now, shaken out of sleep as his heart raced as he saw the broken window and the rock lying on the carpet.

He made his way around the broken glass and cautiously peered out.

The chilly night air came through the broken pane but there was nobody about.

He gave a sigh and shook his head.

"_Kids today..."_ He muttered, thinking about his own youth – it had been a wild time, but only by yesterday's standards. Back when he was young, if he was out for the night he was usually borrowing a friend's car and taking a girl out for a date. Perhaps he'd get lucky perhaps not. Or maybe he'd spend the night drinking with one of his pals. But he _never_ threw rocks through windows. And he was _always_ back home before three in the morning...

As he turned away from the window the shadowy figure in the doorway made him catch his breath.

Then the light snapped on and Trish blinked tired eyes.

"What the hell was that noise, it sounded like breaking glass?"

"It was. I didn't see who did it, I must have been asleep."

Trish saw the shattered window and the shards of glass on the carpet and her eyes narrowed as she walked over to the window.

"_Little bastards!" _She snapped, looking out to find the culprit but seeing no one; the street was silent and deserted.

"Don't worry about it." Vic told her, "Go back to bed, I'll clean it up."

"You think I can sleep after this happened?"

Vic gave a sigh.

"Go back to bed, Trish. At least you _can_ sleep if you want to. This is it for me; I won't sleep again tonight, I'm wide awake now."

"I'll have to get someone to fix the window." She said as she headed for the door.

"I'll do it." Vic promised her, but Trish gave no reply, heading back to bed, wanting nothing else except to try and catch up on her lost sleep.

Vic stood alone in the front room, looking thoughtfully at the rock on the carpet, then back to the broken window.

He briefly wondered why this house, why this window, especially as the TV was on and surely that suggested someone was in the room- but then he shoved those thoughts aside because he still needed sleep and now he had woken up a second time he knew he wouldn't sleep again, not on this night...

He tossed the rock back out the window and then started to clean up the mess.

* * *

There was a time when Nancy would have run in terror from Freddy Krueger.

_But that would only give him what, a thrill? The thrill of the chase like a pack hound chasing a fox, thinking of nothing but the scent and then the taste of hot blood when the chase was through?_

_No._

_Nancy had long ago learned that running from Freddy would get her nowhere; you couldn't out run the dead..._

_It was better to face up to him and her fears, because fear was something he fed upon._

_She had stopped feeding that need a long time ago._

It didn't render him powerless but he was still unused to a mortal turning to him with rage and defiance and lack of terror.

At first it had enraged him but now...now it was different. She didn't doubt that he could slice her in two if he really wanted to – but Freddy didn't want to do that.

Now he would _never_ do that, and only she knew why...

As he grabbed her and slammed her up against the wall she glanced at the flames that flickered near the hot pipes and knew if he wanted to burn her flesh, he would have done it.

Instead he had her by the throat, gripping her with his gloved hand while the razors bunched together, the cold steel a fraction from her face.

"_Why did you stop me?"_ He said darkly, _"Why do you care if I kill your cousin and his wife?"_

Nancy struggled to breathe and reached up, closing her hand around the glove and meeting his cold stare as she shoved his hand aside.

Murder gleamed in Freddy's eyes but he lowered his razors.

"_Why _do you want to defend him?"

His voice was low. His gaze was locked onto hers like he wanted to rip out her soul and tuck it away beneath his grimy sweater, pushing it through rotted flesh, turning her into power that would feed his soul.

"Because he's done nothing to you!" She exclaimed, "And his parents had _nothing_ to do with your murder! The kids of the Elm Street vigilantes are dead – my friends- _you_ killed them! And I won't let you hurt any more of my family!"

And as Freddy's eyes fixed on her hard and cold Nancy reached up, her fingertips brushed his burned cheek with a touch soft as feathers and he flinched, shifting back sharply as if that touch had inflicted agony.

"_Don't do that to me!"_ He roared.

And Nancy gave no reaction to the fierceness that glittered darkly in his eyes or to the way his voice had filled the boiler room with animal strength.

The fires that burned up the walls reflected in her eyes as she looked back at Freddy Krueger.

"_She knows the truth."_

Freddy's head jerked as he looked up from the floor. Nancy thought she saw a glimmer of something rare in his eyes – _fear?_ But then it was gone again, buried beneath hatred as white hot as the flames that had taken his flesh the day he stood falsely accused and the Elm Street vigilantes had doused him in gasoline.

His mouth twisted into a sneer.

"_Who the fuck have you told, Nancy?"_

And he clicked his razors together impatiently.

"I told my Mom, I _told_ her she killed an innocent man! My Dad knows the truth too!"

And she drew in a deep breath, closing her eyes to block out the flicker of the flames even if it didn't cancel out the heat of the boiler room, then she opened her eyes again, a lot faster than she wanted to - because Freddy wasn't someone she wanted to close her eyes on or turn her back on, either - _not for more than a split second..._

Freddy was breathing harder now.

As his eyes fired up with a mix of rage and hatred for old sins against his once human flesh she couldn't read what this mix of emotion would lead to.

Then he slammed his gloved hand into the wall and hit pipes as he gave a roar.

Nancy jumped aside as scalding steam hissed out.

The steam was hitting him full in the face but Freddy just wrenched his blades free and glared at her.

"_YOU WILL NEVER SPEAK OF THAT AGAIN, BITCH!"_

Steam simmered smoky off old burns as he looked at her.

She saw murder in his eyes, she had been expecting that.

But Nancy showed no fear.

"Why are you so afraid of the truth?" She said in a low voice, "Why, Freddy? You showed me what happened. If everyone knew how things really happened, if they knew they'd blamed and hated the wrong man, if they knew the vigilantes burned an innocent man –"

Freddy had her by her shoulders, pushing her up against the wall.

As he leaned in closer his charred skin smelled like fresh burns all over again thanks to the steam from the pipe.

_"Don't sicken me with your forgiveness shit!"_ He said bitterly, _"I killed the children of the vigilantes; I took revenge on those who destroyed my body. They made me into their monster. It's..."_

His grip on her loosened and he looked away from her, not wanting to draw out the words that needed to be said.

But Nancy knew already.

"It's _not_ too late." She said genty, _"It's not too late to –"_

She caught her breath as he pushed her harder up against the wall, shutting off her words as his charred mouth connected with her unblemished lips and he locked her in a kiss.

Nancy closed her eyes, her hands were shaking as she slid them over his shoulders, over the fabric of his dirty sweater.

As he pushed his tongue into her mouth she didn't resist, but her breathing shook as she held onto him, she was feeling the pain that radiated from Freddy every time they touched:

_His agony had started long before his death._

_The pain he had suffered, the rage at being accused of the Springwood murders had cut deeply into his soul._

_Nothing had gone deeper into his spirit to wound irreparably than suffering the agony of such a terrible false accusation._

_Only when he had been released on a technicality had he finally grasped at a spark of hope that he could prove his innocence. _

_But he had known deep down inside there was nowhere he could go, there was no new start for a man who had been accused of such terrible crimes..._

_Freddy Krueger was already in pain before the Elm Street parents had taken him to the boiler room and beaten him and then burned him alive._

_They had assumed that death meant the end._

_But Freddy had gone beyond death, ripped into the next world by the flames that had melted his flesh. _

_He had known nothing but agony and he had died that way and taken the hurt and the rage with him._

_They had still hated him even after his life was gone and a charred corpse remained; they'd cursed his name and hoped he burned in Hell._

_And so he had._

Nancy was still holding him, still locked in a kiss with Freddy that her dead friends far from this place could not understand. She could cross over to the middle ground between the afterlife and Hell if she wanted to reach them. But they had little to say to her even though she had tried to explain the sins of their parents had started all this, even led to their own deaths... _Freddy Krueger wasn't the only killer in this situation – every person who had stood back and watched the boiler room burn was equally guilty..._

His knives were hanging limp as he kept his mouth locked onto her. Then he broke away from the kiss and pressed his cheek against her shoulder.

The gesture was brief, then he let her go, hatred shooting through his soul as if he had just reminded himself not get caught off guard like this – there was no place left inside him for gentle moments, no room for love and tenderness and compassion and all the other things a beast was not entitled to feel.

"Don't hurt my family." Nancy repeated, "Vic's done nothing to you. Don't you think the time has come for the killing to stop?"

Freddy looked back at her with eyes like ice.

"It can never stop, Nancy. There is no other way for me now."

"Why him?" She demanded, "Why my cousin? And why now? You could have killed him around the time you killed Glenn and Tina and Rod, _why_ didn't you kill him back then?"

Coldness still reflected in his eyes and it was icy as death as he recalled being doused with gasoline by the vigilantes.

Nancy was the only one who had ever got close to him, the only one who could ever come near to understanding what drove him...but she couldn't know everything, she couldn't know about _this_, because Freddy knew if he told her his reason, she would try and stop him...

"_Don't get in my way again."_

As he spoke he raised a gloved finger, the blade close to her face as his eyes darkened.

"I can't promise you that! I need to know why!"

Nancy was still looking at him with determination burning in her eyes, that and a total lack of fear that made him feel as if his powers were weakened as he stood up close to her.

Freddy fell silent. He knew the answer but it was something he couldn't share with Nancy...

"_Enough."_ He stated, turning his back.

Nancy wanted to call his name but he was gone off into the shadows.

She watched as his silhouette was outlined, shaded dark against flames that burned amber at the end of the long, winding corridor.

He stopped and looked back, it was the briefest glance but it felt to Nancy as if he may as well have dug one of his blades into her heart and given it a twist. Knowing he was going off alone with nothing for company but his own torment sliced into her soul as deep as his own gloved hand could have reached.

Then Freddy walked around the corner, entering into a burning room where the fire was fierce and cut through the gloom in shades of yellow and orange, needing the solace of those flames to surround him, the flames that reminded him of how he had come to be here in the first place.

_She didn't follow him._

Instead Nancy turned and walked the other way, leaving the burning behind her as she made her way into the darkness and gloom, leaving him alone with the hurts that marked his soul like an infected wound that refused to heal...


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

_It was early evening._

The air was cold and getting sharper as a chill wind blew along Elm Street, rustling leaves that were starting to die and drift from the trees.

"Did you remember to lock the back door?"

Vic looked blankly at Trish as they stood in the porch way.

"Why?"

"Yes or no?"

"_Why?"_ He said again, feeling as if he had just been hit by a random, pointless question.

Trish looked as if her patience was running out again and he knew that look _too_ well – this was just another day when the legacy of the shooting had misted up his brain.

"The back door?" He repeated.

She gave a sigh.

"Some idiot broke a window last night –"

"And I fixed it this afternoon."

Now she was glaring at him.

"And that _same_ idiot might just try and break in while we are out, didn't you think of that? Now tell me, did you lock the back door or not?"

He thought about it, but it was one of those moments when the memory he needed to pull up had slipped through a hole; he couldn't remember.

"I think so..._maybe_..."

She muttered something under her breath and went back into the house.

Vic didn't catch what she had said but he was pretty sure it had been an insult because it sounded that way to him and he hoped she wouldn't do it again tonight, because it didn't take much these days to light the short fuse on his temper...

Trish came back out and closed the door.

"You _did_ lock it." She told him.

Vic said nothing in reply and started to walk up the path carrying two bottles of wine.

Trish closed the gate behind them and they crossed the empty street and went over to Harvey's place.

* * *

As they reached the front door, memories flooded back of the old days and happy times, the times before a shadow had once again been cast over Elm Street...

Vic looked around and thought how little this place had changed over the years.

Then he remembered the day his parents had decided to pack up and get the hell out of Elm Street, it had been right after Rod and the others had died and Nancy had gone missing:

_The cops had blamed everything on a copycat killer, some crazy guy imitating Fred Krueger..._

_Others had said it was Freddy's ghost._

But Vic didn't believe in ghosts.

"_Where did she go?"_ He murmured as he looked back across the front garden towards Elm Street, now heavily shaded by dusk.

"Who?" Trish wondered.

"My cousin Nancy - where did she go when she disappeared?"

Trish didn't even blink.

"I'd say that's obvious, Vic- her friends were killed by a psycho and she...well, she just... _didn't get found_."

Thinking back to the murders sent a chill down her spine.

"Don't go on about the past tonight– you'll spoil the evening." She told him, and then she rang the doorbell.

Then Harvey answered the door and they went inside, and Vic's mood lifted and for a brief time as thoughts about the murders of '84 slipped from his mind.

* * *

As dusk gave way to nightfall, the four of them sat in the front room, Vic and Harvey on the sofa by the fire and Trish seated on the other sofa, she was not as close to Mel as Vic was to his best friend, but she drank the wine and chatted with Mel about being back in Springwood.

"So whose idea was it to move back?" Mel asked her.

"Mine." Trish replied.

And on hearing that reply, Vic, who had been looking through some old photographs with Harvey, looked up at her.

"That's right." He stated, "It was _your_ idea."

And she detected the frosty tone that was coming through and glanced at the empty beer cans on the table. He'd _really_ been knocking it back tonight; she'd forgotten how much Harvey liked a beer, too...

She was about to demand what he meant the way he'd said that when he leaned closer to Vic, looking at a photo he hadn't seen for many years.

"I remember the day that picture was taken!" He exclaimed, "That was about a week before Tina died..."

And Trish fixed him with a stern look.

"Let's not talk about the past, Vic. We want to have a _happy_ evening, don't we?"

Vic glanced at her with slightly glazed eyes.

"Could you shut up about the _we_ shit? I _do_ still have my own mind, even if it's ever so slightly fucked up, thank you very much..."

And Trish was glaring at him and he was about to start yelling at her to get off his case and leave him alone and quit telling him what to do – but Harvey gently squeezed his arm.

"Hey Vic, chill out. It's okay...we can talk about the old days if you want to, I don't mind what we talk about – the happy times, the bad times...I don't mind."

Vic looked down at the picture of Tina Gray and Rod Lane, he saw the younger version of himself beside Rod and he looked at his late friend's smiling face, feeling sad for everyone who had died back in '84... Life could be tough, it could crush dreams, it could be a rough journey and sometimes, the bad times felt like hell...but he guessed everything he had been through was nothing compared to the fate of Rod and his friends, they had never even got to live and get older, they had died too soon:

_Nothing could be worse than dying young..._

He looked back at Harvey.

"I remember Rod Lane. I used to hang out with him sometimes."

Harvey nodded.

"So did I."

That remark made Vic laugh.

"No you didn't, you used to be shit scared of the guy because he carried a blade! You never hung out with Rod Lane, you hung out with _me_ instead!"

"Oh yeah...that's right..."

Harvey's smile faded.

"_Rod Lane killed his girlfriend and then he hung himself in his cell..."_

And everyone in the room fell silent.

Vic paused as he thought about his recollections of that dark time, then he finally spoke up.

"No." He said, cracking open another beer and taking a swig from it, "Rod didn't kill Tina. There's no way he would have done that. He wasn't a bad guy. He wouldn't have used that knife on anyone, especially not his girlfriend."

"You don't know that for sure." Trish remarked, "He was alone in a locked room with her. That should tell you enough, it's not difficult to draw a conclusion."

Vic drank down some more beer and shook his head.

"No." He said again, "I don't think he did it."

Harvey looked into the eyes of his closest friend and thought about what he had just said.

"So... if it wasn't Rod, who else could have killed her?"

"I don't know, I think someone else might have been hiding in the house and they waited until Rod fell asleep and then attacked Tina. That's what I think happened."

Trish shook her head.

"You just can't imagine he was capable of murder. Can't you see how crazy your theory sounds? If someone else was in there, if someone else had killed Tina Gray, how the hell would they have got away from the scene of the crime without being spotted? They would have been covered in blood!"

_"I don't think he did it."_ Vic stated again.

"Oh really?" Trish replied, taking a sip from her wine glass, "Who killed her, then? _Freddy Krueger?_"

Mel shook her head.

"Oh I don't even like _thinking _about what that evil bastard did!"

Harvey laughed at that remark.

"Well we know it wasn't Krueger – he was dead way before the murders in '84. I don't think it was his ghost, either!"

Trish looked at him in surprise.

"You don't believe in Freddy's ghost?"

Harvey's eyes widened.

"I'm not the smartest guy in the world but I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus _or_ Freddy Krueger's ghost! I'm not stupid, the guy's dead! He was a murdering son of a bitch, he got what he deserved, he was burned to death by vigilantes – "

He paused to drink some more beer, "Freddy's dead. _He's gone_. And I don't believe in his ghost, that's stupid stuff's for kids, all that _One, Two, Freddy's coming for you_...just like saying _Bloody Mary_ in front of a mirror...it's all bullshit."

And Mel smiled playfully at her husband.

"So you don't believe in any of it?"

"No." He replied, drinking some more beer.

"Not even in Santa Claus?"

And Harvey thought about it, laughing softly.

"Well maybe I believe in Santa Claus a little _tiny_ bit..."

Vic laughed out loud.

"You used to leave carrots out for the reindeer every Christmas Eve – and we were in our _teens_, Harvey!"

Harvey laughed again as he started to blush.

"_Okay, shut up..."_

"Yes he did!" Mel exclaimed, "I remember, he was _still _doing it when he was sixteen and we'd just started dating!"

And laughter went around the group again and the wine and the beer flowed and for a while, the conversation lightened up.

* * *

Three more beers each later, as Mel talked with Trish, Harvey turned and smiled at Vic.

"We're having a Halloween party next Friday." Harvey told him, "I know I can count on you to turn up and join in the fun...I wonder what costume you'll go for – I'm not tell you what mine's like, it's a surprise!"

"I'll show up." Vic told him, "But I'm not as wild as I used to be, we've all got older."

Harvey looked at him fondly.

"You and me certainly had some good times when we were younger..."

"We sure did!"

Harvey put his arm around Vic.

"Do you remember that time you and me bought those sharp looking suits and partied the night away at that flashy nightclub?"

Vic thought back and shook his head...there had been so _many_ nights out with Harvey when they were younger...

"Which one?"

Harvey swigged from his beer and his eyes sparkled.

"_You know..."_ He lowered his voice, glancing over at the other couch. Trish was talking to Mel about their new home and how much the move had cost.

He looked back at Vic.

"_That_ night." He whispered, "You know, when you got so drunk you couldn't stand up and then you went to bed and had the best night of your life...you said so in the morning...you woke up next to –"

Vic's eyes widened

"_I woke up next to you!"_

Harvey was still smiling.

Vic glanced over at Trish, breathing a sigh of relief that she hadn't heard a word of this conversation.

"I never told Trish about that." Vic murmured.

Then he noticed the sparkle in Harvey's eyes and he laughed.

"_Wild times." _He agreed.

And Harvey laughed too and raised his beer.

"To wild times!" He exclaimed, and the two men clinked bottles.

Trish glanced over, wondering what that toast was all about.

"Go easy on the beer." She said, "You know you can't take the sleepers when you've been drinking."

Vic looked back at his wife and suddenly his mood changed, as it changed he knew the beer was hitting him harder than it used to, his temper was frayed now and there was nothing he could do but let it happen.

"I don't need _you_ to tell me anything." He stated, "I _know_ when I've had enough to drink, I know how to handle my meds and I _don't_ need you making any more decisions for me!"

Mel and Harvey exchanged a glance.

Anger blazed in Vic's eyes as he glared at his wife.

"I've had _enough_ of you!" He said as he got up, "I've had enough of you treating me like I can't even _think_ for myself!"

"Vic, just sit down –"

Harvey had grabbed at his sleeve but he shrugged him off as he looked at his wife, then shifted his gaze to Mel.

"You want to know why we moved back to Springwood? We moved back here because I had an affair, I actually met a woman who made me _happy_ and Trish broke us up! That's why I had to move back here, because I was fooling around! I don't know why she wanted us to come back here to this town – maybe there's no single women in Springwood any more..."

"_And who would want you now?"_

As she caught the hurt look in Vic's eyes Trish knew she had said too much but it was too late to take it back.

"That was harsh." Harvey said.

Trish set down her wine glass and grabbed her coat.

"I'm going home."

As she got up Mel was trying to calm the situation, urging her to sit down and relax, but she headed for the door.

Anger sparked in Vic's eyes as he went out of the room to call her back.

_"Say it again!"_ He yelled, _"Come on Trish, say it again in front of our friends –"_

Mel shot her husband a nervous look.

"What the hell is wrong with Vic?"

"Well she said he's changed since the shooting." Harvey replied.

He got up from the couch just as Vic yelled his wife's name and she shouted to him to _get the hell off her._

Mel's eyes widened in alarm.

"Harvey, _do_ something..."

He didn't need to be told twice.

Harvey rushed out the hall in time to see Vic grab his wife by the shoulders and shove her up against the wall.

His eyes were blazing as he glared at her, his fingers were digging into her shoulders and she looked terrified now.

"Who would want me now?" He said angrily, "I'm so messed up, I'm so screwed in the head that _no one_ else would want me, am I supposed to be _grateful_ I'm stuck with you?"

Harvey grabbed Vic's arms and pulled him back.

"_Get off me!"_ Vic shouted, stumbling as Harvey dragged him back from Trish, _"Don't make me hit you –"_

"I'm going home." Trish said again, grabbing her purse from the floor.

She glanced back at Vic. Harvey still had a firm hold on him.

"_You're not coming back to the house tonight."_ She stated and left in a hurry, slamming the door behind her.

* * *

Harvey kept hold of Vic as he struggled to get free.

"_Stop it!"_ He said sharply, "You're _not _going to hurt anyone! This isn't you talking, Vic- it's the booze and your other problem, you know that_...just chill!_"

And Vic took in a deep breath as he gave up the fight.

The room span for a moment and he looked into the eyes of his best friend and blinked away tears as he gave a sob.

He thought about the bullet that caused the damage and slid his fingers into his hair, pressing against his skull as he wished his mind would just go back together the way it used to be.

"_I don't want to be like this, I can't cope with it..."_

Harvey was still holding on to Vic as he glanced at Mel.

"I'll take care of him." He promised her.

Mel nodded and began clearing away the beer bottles.

Harvey led Vic towards the stairs.

"Don't worry about Trish locking you out...we've all been drinking, it'll be better in the morning."

They were halfway up the stairs by now.

"No it _won't _better in the morning."

It made Harvey's heart ache to hear his closest friend sound so unhappy.

"Sure it will. Come on, you can sleep in the spare room tonight."

Harvey took Vic to the room at the end of the hall and opened the door and they went into a small but comfortable guest room.

Vic sat down heavily on the bed and looked sadly into Harvey's eyes.

"I can't sleep without my pills. I can't take my pills tonight, I've been drinking."

Harvey's eyes lit up as he thought of an idea that made perfect sense.

"But you don't _need _pills, Vic! Booze can be the solution tonight! _Everybody_ sleeps after they've been drinking..."

Hearing those words made Vic smile. No matter how bad the situation was Harvey always found a way to see the positive.

"I guess you're right – I'll probably pass out!"

Harvey leaned closer and put his arm around him, giving him a brief hug.

"Go to sleep, Vic. It'll be okay in the morning."

"Thanks for putting up with me."

Harvey looked into his eyes and thought about all the years he had known Vic Fox and a warm rush of fondness swept over him.

"It's no trouble at all." He promised him, pausing to hug him again and kiss his cheek before leaving the room and closing the door behind him.

Vic reached out and snapped off the light then sank back on to the bed.

He was sure he used to be able to hold his beer better than he did these days:

Before the shooting, he was _never_ a nasty drunk. He was clumsy, he was funny (at least, he _thought_ he was and he hoped everyone else did too), and he knew he talked a little too much. But he had _never_ been violent and bad tempered with it - not until that bastard with the hand gun had pumped a bullet into his head...

Vic lay in the dark and thought about the way he had ruined the evening with his short temper and then his head ached and reminded him as he turned over and the room span around that he was definitely right – he couldn't drink like he used to, just like every other aspect of his life that had changed since the shooting – it was _all_ different now...nothing would ever be the same again.

It was his last thought as he closed his eyes.

Harvey was right, the beer _did_ help; Vic gave into drunken exhaustion quickly, sliding into a deep and heavy sleep.

* * *

He didn't know how long he slept.

But when a trash can clattered onto its side and he heard the sound of empty wine bottles breaking, Vic woke up sharply.

His head was still slightly dazed from the drinking but the room wasn't spinning any more.

He gotup and opened the bedroom window and looked down – the trash was strewn over the yard and the bottles were broken.

Then he looked up sharply, all the way to the end of the long, narrow yard:

_Was someone down there in the shadows?_

Vic peered out into the darkness, trying to distinguish shapes from gloom and suddenly one of the shapes moved.

He caught his breath as he stared into the darkness:

_He had only seen him for a moment – a tall guy with a hat who kept his head bowed as he stepped back against the wall, swallowed up by the dark once more..._

As he stepped away from the window he drew in an uneasy breath while his heart hammered harder against his chest. He was half drunk, he'd just had a fight with his wife, he had slept in his clothes at his best friend's house and he didn't know if Trish would let him back in when morning came. It was a bad situation - and a _really_ lousy time to spot a prowler in the yard, too...

He briefly wondered if he ought to call the cops.

Then he changed his mind, remembering the broken window the night before over at his own house. Maybe this neighbourhood had gone downhill since he'd been away, maybe kids liked to spend their nights around here breaking windows and breaking into other people's back yards too...

He left the bedroom and crossed the hall, tapping on Harvey and Mel's bedroom door.

"Harvey!" He called softly, but got no reply.

He thought again about the stranger in the yard and grabbed the door handle, pushing it down quickly – but the door wouldn't open.

Vic hammered on the bedroom door.

"_Harvey!"_ He yelled, _"Wake up!"_

_And there was no reply._

His head briefly swam and he wasn't sure if it was down to stress or too much beer.

"_Harvey, Mel! Wake up, there's some guy downstairs –"_

And he heard a dark, low cackle from further down the hall.

Vic slowly turned his head, breaking out into a sweat as it dawned on him that stranger in the yard wasn't out in the yard any more, he was coming up the stairs...

_The stranger had reached the top now._

_He stood there in a hat that shaded his face and he wore a dirty red and green sweater._

_Vic had grown up on Elm Street. It was too early for Halloween but of course he knew who this guy was dressed up as... he knew by the razors on the end of the glove he wore on his right hand._

"Okay..."

Vic raised a trembling hand as he took a step backwards, "I'm guessing this is some kind of a joke and if you're one of Harvey's friends the party is _next_ week..."

The man with the razor glove tensed as Vic spoke but remained at the top of the stairs.

The stranger's silence was unnerving.

"That's...um...a very_...realistic_ Freddy Krueger look you've put together..."

And Vic backed up against the door, closing his hand over the door handle one more time.

"_Very_ realistic..." He said again nervously, "_Especially_ that glove...those razors look real! But I'm not sure that's a good choice of costume, I mean – this _is_ Elm Street!"

The man at the top of the stairs looked up.

Moonlight caught on his burned features and the darkness that gleamed in his eyes.

As his hand impatiently twitched and the razors clinked together he began to stride towards Vic, who smashed the door handle downwards just as he slammed his body against the door, as it opened he fell through, hit the carpet and scrambled to his feet again, kicking out as the man with the razored glove made a swipe for him.

He threw himself onto the bed.

"_WAKE UP!"_ He yelled as he reached for Harvey.

Then Vic was grabbed by the shoulders and spun around sharply. The man who had him in his grasp was unbelievably strong; He slammed Vic back down on the bed, making him fall hard against his best friend.

"_HARVEY!" _He yelled.

And the stranger smiled and leaned closer, raising a blade delicately to his lips.

"Shh." He said, glancing at the sleeping couple.

Vic turned his head and stared in horror:

Harvey stirred in his sleep, smiling contentedly as he put his arm around his wife.

Mel gave a sigh and also slept on.

_They couldn't hear him._

_They couldn't help him._

The burned man who had hold of him pulled him brutally closer as his fingers clutched at his shirt.

Fear had made him weak and Vic stared helplessly into the maniac's eyes.

"Who the hell are you?" He whispered as he drew in a frightened, shallow breath.

And the man raised his hand, his other hand, the free one – the gloved one with the knives on the end of it...

Vic's gaze was fixed on those razors as they caught the gleam of the moonlight; the silver glow seemed to trickle down the edges of the blades.

"_Well I'm not the Tooth Fairy."_ He said darkly, _"Or Santa Claus..."_

And he gave a low chuckle.

Vic's eyes widened.

_Those blades were real._

_And this man had a face full of scars, real scars just like a charred corpse..._

His eyes blazed with malice as he spoke again.

"_Say my name, bitch!"_

Vic blinked back tears as he drew the blades closer.

"_You're not real!"_

Three low spoken words came from his burned lips:

"_Say...My...Name!"_

And his grip tightened painfully, twisting at his flesh beneath the fabric of his shirt as he dragged him closer and held the blades poised at his throat.

Vic dragged in a breath.

"You're _not_ him! _Fred Krueger is dead!_"

And Freddy smiled a cruel smile.

"_Wrong answer!"_

And he lunged with his gloved hand.

Vic fell back against Harvey and his wife, who slept on oblivious as if separated by another dimension and unaware of his presence as he fought for his life, grabbing at Freddy's glove as he gripped at his wrist with both hands using all his strength to try and hold him back.

Then Freddy shrugged off his grasp and sliced at his throat.

Vic saw it coming and turned aside, yelling out as the blades bit into his shoulder.

Freddy drew back the blades for a second strike and Vic saw his chance.

He shoved him hard, using every ounce of his strength and as Krueger lost his grip, Vic rolled over and jumped up from the bed, he ran for the door and headed for the stairs, not caring that it was dark and he could barely see his way - he knew that maniac was behind him. He tore down the stairs and reached the front door, wrenching it open and running out into the street.

He stumbled off the side walk grasping at his bleeding shoulder and staggered into the road.

"_Someone help me!" _He yelled.

Vic looked up and down Elm Street.

The houses were dark.

The roads were empty.

This was his nightmare; Freddy was after him and no one could help him...

"_HELP ME!"_ He shouted again as he clutched at his painful shoulder.

Then Freddy was out of the house, he was coming across the lawn, he was coming out into the street and Vic knew he was going to die, he knew as he looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of Freddy half lit by the street lighting, half covered with shadow, coming closer as his knives twitched with impatience to slice at him again...

* * *

Vic fell to his knees and sobbed.

He couldn't run any more.

It wouldn't make a difference anyway; Freddy was fast, Freddy would catch him...

_And then someone grabbed his hands._

He gave a yell of pain as the wounds to his shoulder bit deep but he was getting dragged to his feet.

_"Get up!"_

Vic was on his feet now, convinced Krueger was about to hack him up with his knives.

But as he blinked the street was bright and the sun was shining and Freddy had gone away as if banished by the sudden coming of the daylight.

"Don't let go of my hands."

"Okay." He said breathlessly, "Thanks...what ever you did, how ever you got rid of him...thank you _so_ much!"

And he took in another breath and looked at the girl who stood before him.

_He knew her face._

He knew her long dark hair and her eyes and her smile and...It _couldn't _be Nancy, she was dead, she had been gone for years...she had vanished around the time her friends had died...

But here she was, standing in the middle of Elm Street holding both his hands and looking into his eyes.

It was her, it _was_ Nancy – and she hadn't aged a single day, she still looked like the teenager who had vanished back in '84...

"_Nancy?"_ He said in a hushed voice, _"No...You're dead..."_

Nancy was looking intently at him.

"Oh God, Vic! She exclaimed,"When did you get so old?"

And suddenly the memory of the nightmare in the dark, the fight with Krueger and even the pain from his wounds were cancelled out as he looked at his cousin and wished this wasn't just a dream, because she seemed so real, so very much alive and he could still recall the day he had sobbed at her memorial service...

"Oh Nancy," He said tearfully, "I really wish this was real, but I know its part of a crazy dream and that's the hardest thing for me."

"No!" Nancy told him, "You don't understand - this isn't a dream! Freddy got you; he cut you with his knives. If he comes for you in a dream, if he hurts you, if you die – it's for _real!_"

Vic shook his head. He still felt shaken by the part about Freddy but the rest of this dream was making his heart ache because he was standing here talking to Nancy as if she was still alive, she _felt_ alive; her hands were warm as she held onto him.

"Sweet heart," He said as he blinked back tears, "I _didn't_ get old. I just got _older,_ something you didn't get the chance to do. And I'm so sorry you were taken from us but there was nothing we could do – no one could find you."

Confusion clouded Nancy's eyes as she realized what she saw in her cousin's eyes was grief.

"_I'm not dead!"_ She exclaimed_, "He didn't kill me!"_

And she tightened her grip on his hands.

"And he won't kill you either! Just hold on to me, as long as I keep hold of you I can keep you here with me and he can't harm you."

Then Nancy looked over his shoulder.

It was the briefest glance but he caught it and turned his head.

"_Don't look!"_ She said sharply, but Vic had seen it:

_Behind them, the world had grown dark and narrowed into a dimly lit corridor of steaming pipes and deep in the darkness flames flickered like this passage led straight into hell._

_And there he was, a silhouette against flame: he stood in the distance waiting, his knives hanging at his side as he fixed his gaze onto the bright world beyond the gloom where Vic stood holding on to Nancy's hands._

Vic drew in a sharp breath.

"_Oh shit, he's coming for us!"_

"No, he can't touch you here." She promised him, "I'm between worlds because he kept me with him, but he can't keep me with him all the time. He's in his boiler room – that's where he wants to trap you."

Panic swept over him as he kept his gaze fixed on his cousin. He had looked back once and that had been enough, he didn't want to see that sight again..

"I am _never_ going in that boiler room!"

"You'll wake up in a minute, you'll be okay." Nancy promised, "But I want you to remember this..."

And she looked into his eyes and spelled it out:

"_Freddy means to kill you – I don't know why because your parents had nothing to do with his death – but he will get you if he gets into your dreams. I can't always be around to save you, Vic! Just make sure you don't fall asleep without your meds again. Those meds are so strong they kill your dreams. If you don't dream, you can't die."_

Vic stared at Nancy.

"This is so crazy and so real..._how _can this be so real?"

"_It's real."_ Nancy told him, and then she let go of his hands.

* * *

Vic woke up with a gasp, sitting up so fast the room span and reminded him of last nights booze.

His heart was beating fast and his clothes were soaked in sweat, just like the covers where he had been sleeping on top of them. There was a stink of stale booze in the air and he knew he needed a shower.

He also knew he needed to thank Harvey and Mel for putting up with him and giving him a place to stay for the night; he would thank them first and then go home and apologize to Trish, that was his plan so far even though he wasn't even sure if sorry would be enough after the way he'd kicked off the night before...

Vic went into the bathroom and went straight over to the sink. He turned on the water and splashed his face, just to wake himself up properly.

Then he started to unbutton his shirt because it was clinging to him and he was sure he'd never sweat so heavily in his life before.

And then he froze in front of the mirror, staring at his reflection as shock hit him and he felt as if his blood had turned to ice.

_That clinging dampness wasn't sweat. His shirt was crimson with drying blood, it was ripped too. _

_He lifted back the blood stained shirt and he saw his shoulder was marked with four slashes, four cuts where the razors had sliced him._

As his face turned pale he didn't move from the mirror, he was unable to shift his gaze from the wounds:

_Freddy's knives had done this._

_Freddy had cut him for real._

_Nancy had been telling the truth – it was all true._

_It was all real, and so was Freddy Krueger..._


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Vic pulled his jacket closed, hiding his slashed and bloody shirt as he left Harvey's house.

His best friend and his wife had been in the kitchen having breakfast and they had asked him to join them.

Vic had simply shaken his head and said something about needing to go home to talk to Trish.

Then he had walked away and closed the front door, pausing outside for a moment to take in the fresh air as he tried to get his thoughts into some kind of order that would make sense, but no matter how hard he thought about it, everything still seemed crazy:

_At least he knew Harvey and Mel were okay._

_He had fought Freddy Krueger on their bed while they lie sleeping, but they hadn't woken..._

_How could that be?_

_How could they have slept on as he rolled about on the bed fighting off that maniac?_

_How could Freddy draw him into his nightmare world and have him so alone there?_

He thought about the look in Freddy's eyes as he had held him an iron grasp and raised his glove. As he thought about that moment the wounds on his shoulder throbbed painfully as he crossed the street and walked toward his own house.

As he walked he wondered why Krueger had singled him out like this:

_Why was Freddy trying to kill him?_

_He had grown up on Elm Street, Nancy's friends had all died but Freddy had not come for him back then._

_Harvey had grown up here too._

_Harvey and Mel had been in his nightmare yet Freddy hadn't tried to kill them. They'd lived on Elm Street for more than twenty five years, they'd raised their kids here – Freddy hadn't come for any of Harvey's family..._

He was still lost in his own thoughts as he opened the front door and went inside. He had expected it to be locked after last night but his key had opened the door just like it always did and Mel had stepped out into the hallway and given him a stony look.

"Don't you have anything to say for yourself?" She demanded.

"_No."_ Vic replied quietly, keeping his jacket closed as he looked away and headed straight upstairs.

_Trish didn't follow him._

* * *

A brief time later, in the bathroom after a hot shower, Vic was cautiously finishing off dressing the painful wounds in his flesh when he heard the front door close loudly.

Moments later his wife's car left the driveway and Vic breathed a sigh of relief; at least Trish had decided to go out, that was better for him because he didn't want to see her right now.

He didn't want to see her and it was nothing to do with their fight the night before...

Right now, Vic didn't want to see _anyone_.

He got dressed again, clean clothes helped to cover up the reminder of what had happened because his bloody shirt was now stuffed into a bag ready to go in the trash – but every movement was painful, making the thought constant that everything that had happened last night had been real.

_He wondered if he ought to take a sleeper because the hangover was making him feel lousy on top of the cuts from Freddie's knives._

_Then he remembered he couldn't take them with booze in his bloodstream, because it could prove fatal._

_It struck him as ironic that he could die taking meds just to avoid dreams; either way he could wind up dead - Freddy would get him in the end..._

As his shoulder ached Vic leaned against the cold tiled bathroom wall, then he gave a sob and slid to the floor:

_Fred Krueger was real. _

_He was real and he was coming to get him..._

* * *

It took him a while to get up from the floor and pull himself together enough to stop sobbing.

Then Vic went downstairs and made a strong coffee. He sat in the front room drinking it while the cloudy sky brightened up and the sunlight came in through the window. It made the room painfully bright because of his hangover but he didn't care; he couldn't get back on his meds yet but at least the coffee and the daylight would stop him from falling asleep too soon...

He sat in the silence for a while thinking about all he had learned. Then when he couldn't bear to think about Krueger any longer, he switched his thoughts to Nancy:

_He could still recall the day he had gone over to her house and knocked on the door._

_While he waited for an answer his hands had been sweating and his throat had gone tight as he thought about the way he had felt as he went over everything in his mind: _

_This was something Rod Lane would have found easy. _

_Rod would have just come out with it and said it – but he wasn't like Rod Lane. _

_Sure, he had been with a handful of girls with varying degrees of success, but this was different – he had never felt like this before, not the way he did about his cousin Nancy Thomson._

_It had started back in school, when she had turned around and smiled at him and suddenly his stomach had flipped and his heart had felt like it stopped in his chest._

After that day every time he hoped to see her, he often got his wish – only to find his shyness got the better of him...

And on that day he called at her house, as he waited for an answer, he had thought so hard about what he was going to say, but even though asking her if she wanted to go to a movie with him was a simple question, the way he felt about her was not so simple... _It was deep, it was beautiful and it was intense. He was sure he loved her even if she didn't know it._

Nancy had opened the door and smiled and he had taken a deep breath.

"Hi Vic!" She said, "What are you doing here?"

Vic looked into her eyes as he smiled nervously.

"I was just wondering what you're doing Saturday..."

"_Saturday?" _

He was sure he was blushing and the thought was just making it worse, making him wish he could invent an excuse and walk off because he knew he was going to fail miserably at asking his cousin out for a date...

"Um...yeah, I was going to the movies and I wondered if you –"

He stopped right there. Nancy's gaze had shifted from him, over his shoulder.

She was smiling now, her eyes lighting up in a way he dreamed of - but _not_ for him.

"Hi Glen!" She said brightly as Glen Lantz walked up the path and joined him on the doorstep.

They looked at each other and began to talk and suddenly Vic was aware that three was _definitely _a crowd- and he was the crowd and he needed to go.

"I'll see you around." He said quickly.

"No, wait up!" Glen told him, "Don't leave on my account."

"You said something about Saturday?" Nancy wondered.

Vic knew his face was flushing even harder now.

"_It doesn't matter. I'll see you another time...bye"_

And he turned to walk away.

He heard Glen ask what that was all about and Nancy had replied, _"I don't know, that's my cousin Vic, I don't really see a lot of him..."_

_And Vic had closed the gate behind him and walked home feeling crushed._

He had cried into his pillow over Nancy, knowing she saw him as no more than _cousin Vic_, it was all he would _ever_ be in her eyes - and one look in her eyes had told him all he needed to know the moment Glen had turned up on the scene- she was in love. She had made her choice and he didn't figure in her plans, not now or ever.

_There never had been another chance with Nancy because Nancy had disappeared after the deaths of her friends._

_He had been to Rod lane's funeral; he had been to Tina's funeral too. _

_He wasn't invited to Glen's because he didn't know him well enough._

_But he had cried for all of Nancy's friends._

The memorial for Nancy was hardest of all:

_He had stood there feeling uncomfortable in a borrowed black suit and tie, thinking it was so wrong that he was in his teens and had to suddenly start going to funerals. People his age just didn't die like this, they just didn't, they went out, they had fun - sometimes they got in trouble, but they didn't die. He had felt as if death had no right to lay its hand upon youth. And it seemed as if the whole of Springwood was draped in black as they mourned their lost kids. Vic had wept for Nancy, wishing he could find her, even if it meant digging up a ravaged corpse or even dry bones – anything to give her a decent burial..._

_But the cops couldn't find her._

_No one could find her._

_They never found her.  
_

_He had mourned her death for almost three decades..._

Vic pulled his thoughts back to the present and drank down some more coffee.

Then he thought some more about Nancy – if Krueger was real, so was Nancy:

_Nancy had saved him._

_She had taken hold of his hands and pulled him out of the nightmare, taken him far enough into the light to save him from Freddy._

_If Freddy was real, so was she; Nancy was still alive._

_She was still alive and still in her teens, barely a woman and trapped in time or hell or what ever that dream demon had control over..._

In the midst of despair Vic grasped at a spark of hope that ignited in his heart.

He drank the rest of the coffee and it came as a relief that the caffeine was kicking in already; he felt wide awake now.

"_Nancy..."_ He whispered as he stayed lost in his thoughts, _"You're still alive..."_

* * *

It was a couple of hours later when he heard a knock at the door.

He wondered if Trish had left her keys and he gave a sigh as he got up; the coffee had done its work to keep him wide awake but he still felt exhausted, it was under the surface, hidden by several layers of caffeine and dragging at him to close his eyes for more than five seconds...

Vic focused on the daylight as he walked towards the front door, not caring if it was Trish, not caring if she was about to launch into a quarrel with him over his behavior the night before- he felt as if the real world had been wiped out of all significance now he knew the truth about Freddy and the truth about Nancy; she wasn't dead and that was the only part of this terrible situation that kept him from collapsing into a sobbing heap on the floor again _– Nancy was alive and he knew he had to keep reminding himself of that fact, just to make sure the rest of it didn't make him go insane..._

Vic opened the door and found himself face to face with Harvey, who smiled brightly and looked wide awake and this only reminded him that his pal Harvey had enjoyed a _great_ night's sleep, oblivious to the fact that he had been rolling around on the bed on top of them while he fought off Freddy Krueger.

"Did you sort things out with Trish?" He said hopefully.

Vic gave a weary sigh and stepped back, opening the door wider.

Harvey came in and Vic closed the door again.

Harvey glanced around the empty house, noticing the stillness and the silence.

"So you made up with her?"

He sounded so hopeful; he just hadn't noticed the look in his eyes.

"She went out. She usually does when we've had a fight, I probably won't see her again until tonight."

Harvey frowned.

"Where's she gone?"

"Her Mom's house, or maybe to her sisters, or one of her friends –I don't know!"

They had wandered through to the kitchen now.

Vic started to make some more coffee.

"Want one?"

"I just had one before I left the house."

"Then it's just _another_ one for me..." Vic said, switching on the coffeemaker.

Harvey watched as his friend made the coffee.

He watched him until he turned around and took a sip from the cup and then he spoke up again.

"Is something the matter?"

Vic put the cup down and looked at his not-too-bright friend:

_Was something the matter?_

A thought ran through his head that perhaps he ought to tell him everything, saying:

"_Well Harvey, it's like this... Freddy Krueger IS real. He came to try and kill me last night while I was sleeping over at your house... He was fighting with me on your bed but you and Mel just didn't wake up. He got me with his knives, he sliced me on the shoulder, and you should see the size of the cuts! But I was rescued by Nancy, you remember my cousin, the one who disappeared? She's not dead, she's just trapped in his world...but she got me out. I guess I'll be okay from now on if I take my meds every night and don't fall asleep without them, because he can't get me unless I dream..."_

As those worlds ran through his head, he was still looking at Harvey, who blinked and spoke again.

"Vic? What's the matter?"

And Vic laughed as he shook his head.

Harvey's eyes clouded with confusion.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Are you still drunk?"

As his laughter threatened to turn into sobs he took in a sharp breath and pushed it all away because Harvey _didn't_ need to know about this, Harvey _didn't_ deserve to be caught up in the kind of shit storm he was in right now..._it was better to say nothing and lie even though he felt like screaming, going crazy or both. Those feelings would have to stay inside because he knew for sure if he voiced aloud all he knew, his best friend would think he'd gone nuts..._

"I had a bad dream last night." He stated as he sipped some more coffee, feeling safer now as he reminded himself that coffee would have to be his new best buddy until the booze was out of his system and he could get back on his meds.

"About what?" Harvey wondered.

"_Freddy Krueger."_

Harvey's face paled and his eyes grew wider.

"What did he look like?"

It seemed absurd to laugh again, this time because Harvey had asked what seemed like the dumbest question, but Vic managed a smile as he shook his head.

"He looked like _Freddy Krueger_, Harvey! You know, the maniac who killed all those kids on Elm Street when we were growing up? The one who - according to all the _superstitious_ folk out there - came back from the grave to kill my cousin and her friends back in '84? He's all burned up, wears this battered old hat and a dirty red and green sweater...oh, and he's got these great big knives on the end of his glove...well actually they're more like _razors._.."

And the wound ached in his shoulder as he raised his coffee cup and he transferred the cup to his other hand and took a sip from it.

"So he _was_ the real one..." Harvey's voice was hushed and his eyes were wide.

Vic stared at him.

"I thought you said you didn't believe in Freddy?"

"That was just me acting big in front of the girls." Harvey said quietly, "I grew up on Elm Street, I lived here all my life, I raised my own kids here too –how could I _not_ believe in him?"

And the two men stood there looking at each other, saying nothing.

Then Harvey stepped closer to him and looked into his eyes. His voice was low and Vic could tell at a glance the guy was genuinely scared now.

"What happened?"

"He got hold of me, he cut me, I got away and he chased me..."

Vic stopped right there, deciding this was more than enough information for a guy who needed no proof to believe that Krueger's ghost was more than just an urban legend.

"_Oh shit..."_ Harvey whispered as his face paled_,"He came after you?"_

And then Harvey gently placed his hand on his shoulder – thankfully not the injured one – and leaned closer to Vic. As he did that a thought ran through Vic's mind that he hadn't been so close to this guy since they'd spent the night together back in the wild days of their youth.

"_I'm so glad he didn't get you!"_ Harvey exclaimed, and he put his arms around him and squeezed him tight.

Vic's shoulder was agony but he slowly raised his arm and hugged him back, ignoring the pain because right now he just needed the closeness because it reminded him that he was still alive, in the real world once more and apart from a wounded shoulder, was still very much in one piece.

Harvey pulled back a little.

"_Did he hurt you for real?"_

Suddenly Vic was too aware of their closeness; it seemed as if all he had to do was lean in a fraction and...No, he _wasn't_ going to kiss him. He loved the guy, he loved Harvey in so many ways but what they had shared was in the past and what remained of those feelings were better kept locked away with all those things that could never be said, those things that were best left as sweet memories – Harvey was happily married and had been for many years now.

Vic knew he couldn't say the same about himself, but what had happened had been right at the time, when they were in their teens. Their lives had taken different paths now and Vic understood his own sexuality better than he had back then – if he was bisexual, he had only ever had feelings for Harvey and he and Harvey had remained best friends - and _that_ was something too precious to tinker with; they had a bond that ran to closest friendship and it would never break. But what was in his heart would have to simply stay there, like a souvenir. Times had changed and so had his understanding of what he wanted in a partner. Vic had found he preferred women – even though he guessed that he could probably reason that all those years married to Trish could have been enough put him off women for the rest of his life...

Harvey was looking into his eyes.

"Are you sure you're okay?" He said softly.

Vic was still close to him. He wanted to hug him again, hold him close for a long time and then maybe – _No_. He let go of him as a wave of fondness for him turned into deepest affection.

And then Vic laughed it all off because he didn't want to see such anxiety in his friend's eyes.

"_Oh forget about it, Harv! It was only a stupid dream!"_

And as he said that, he knew Harvey believed him because he smiled at last.

Vic knew it would have been a very different story if he had unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it aside and showed him the slash marks livid on his shoulder; Harvey would have been horrified and that was the _last_ thing he wanted to do to his best friend.

He promised him he would see him Friday for the Halloween party and then Harvey left, as he walked out the door he said he hoped things would work out with Trish.

Vic had forced a smile and told him he was sure it would be just fine.

Then Harvey was gone and he closed the door and breathed a heavy sigh.

It was so much harder to be alone now, knowing all he had discovered. The feeling isolated him; he was alone with the truth that Freddy Krueger was real and Nancy was still alive.

Vic went back into the kitchen and made another coffee, knowing only one thing for certain:

_He needed the caffeine until the booze was out of his system, then he would be back on his meds and there would be no more Freddy Krueger haunting him in his dreams, because there would be no more dreams..._

* * *

The atmosphere in the house began to lose tension as Trish said no more about their quarrel.

If she had forgiven him she didn't say so, but as she turned her back on him in bed he guessed things could have been a _lot_ worse – had she been loving and affectionate she might have reached for him and run her hands beneath his pajama shirt and started to slide it off him _– and then she would have got the shock of her life seeing four slash marks slowly healing on his shoulder..._

But Trish had turned her back and Vic had lay awake in the dark, waiting until she was asleep and then reaching for the coffee that was blocking his sleep.

Vic had made it through the night, getting up at the break of dawn with slightly shaking hands and a painful throbbing headache that seemed to be getting worse by the minute as the caffeine overload took its revenge.

He had gone into the bathroom and swallowed painkillers, resisting the urge to go back to bed and close his eyes because he knew how exhausted he felt and now the booze was out of him, certainly enough for him to take a sleeper- but he gave it an hour to make sure the painkillers had kicked in, then he finally swallowed the small white pill that promised him safety in sleep and he went back to bed, welcoming the tiredness that swiftly came over him.

He heard Trish get up and ask him if he wanted coffee.

That remark struck him as ironic; _he was sure he had drunk so much of the stuff if it wasn't for the pain pills he'd just swallowed he would have had the mother of all headaches by now_... He just turned over, embracing the big soft pillow as he'd murmured that he needed to sleep.

Then finally, he had drifted off into a dreamless place where his exhausted body and mind could safely rest.

* * *

_The next few days had passed uneventfully._

Vic had taken the sleepers every night until Friday loomed closer and then he thought about the party.

He wasn't intending to drink any booze that night but he still held a vivid and scary memory of going to a party with Trish a few months back, picking up a glass of what he thought was lemonade, drinking it down and finding out afterwards it actually contained triple vodka. He'd collapsed on the floor a short while later, dizzy and slurring his words and barely able to focus.

And purely because he didn't want to have that kind of accident again, he'd left off his pills the night before, knowing he could easily cope for one night without sleep just in case the worst happened again.

He had spent a sleepless night fuelled by coffee and then taken a cold shower in the morning to make sure he was properly awake and then he had asked Trish if she wanted to go with him to the costume hire place later on.

But she had already got herself a costume; she had pointed to the bag with the black velvet cat suit in it and plastic cat's ears and a furry tail and told him she'd bought her costume three days ago.

And then she had asked him, _"Why do you always leave things until the last minute?"_

It was gone mid day by the time Vic finally left the house and got into the car and set off for the costume hire store in town.

* * *

The afternoon sun was warm and the weather was mild, the only clues on this bright day to the time of year were the red and bronze and yellow leaves that were drifting from trees as the season turned.

Vic parked his car and got out and headed over to the store that had an impressive display in the window.

The store front was decked out with paper bats and pumpkin lanterns and rubber rats and had a witch on a broomstick that was suspended in the middle of the display complete with striped socks and a wrinkled, wart-filled face and hair like straw, on the back of her broomstick sat a mean looking toy cat with spiked up fur and hissing jaws and plastic green eyes.

The bell above the door jingled as he walked in and as he looked around at the party supplies and the Halloween decorations that were hung from the ceiling, he thought about _real_ horror and all the reasons why he wanted this night to be over:

_He was only turning up at the party to make Harvey happy_.

Right now a Halloween party was the very _last _place he felt like going to...

He walked up to the counter.

A young woman was behind it, she looked no older than twenty five and she smiled at him as her pale blue eyes sparkled. She had dark, bobbed hair and as she smiled he thought how that smile reminded him a little of Nancy – but he pushed that thought aside because he knew there was _no_ chance he could risk even thinking about going back into that nightmare place where Krueger had tried to kill him:

_Whatever kind of plane of existence Nancy was trapped in, he felt he could do nothing to help her. _

_And he reasoned that as she had saved him she was pretty good at surviving in there any way._

_Then his own thoughts made him feel like a coward and he hated himself for turning away from her._

_But there was no way, no chance ever that he would go back there and go into the darkness and follow the path toward those flames:_

_He would never go into that boiler room..._

He took in a deep breath and reminded himself that he was safe here, in the real world, he was safe at night too - his sleepers ensured that.

But guilt had crept up on him as he thought how he felt about Nancy, and about how she had saved him and he had got the hell out and had no intention of going back to help her...

That girl behind the counter was still smiling at him; she had no idea he was such a coward that he was too afraid to go back into Hell and get Nancy out. She didn't know he'd met Freddy Krueger and run away from him – _and_ needed to get his sorry ass saved by a girl, either...

"Can I help you?" The woman asked him as she leaned on the counter.

Vic blinked, taking in the sight of the shop and all the fakery that gave illusion of horror. This wasn't Hell – he had seen _real _terror when he had fought with Freddy – this was just Halloween, in here _scary_ was made of paper and plastic and tomorrow it would all be packed away in a box ready for next year.

"I'd like to hire a Halloween costume." He told her.

"We're out of costumes." She said, "Sorry."

"But this is a costume hire store! You must have _some_ Halloween costumes left?"

She gave a sigh.

"Halloween is _today._" She reminded him, "We've been busy. There's nothing left unless you want to dress up as a princess or a fairy and those costumes are definitely _not_ in your size."

Vic gave a sigh.

"Okay, it doesn't matter..."

He turned to leave when she called him back.

"Let me just check this... there _might_ be something out the back that I missed, but I can't promise it will be anything suitable...this won't take five minutes."

"Okay."

Vic waited by the counter while the girl pushed a drape aside and went out the back of the store.

His cell phone rang and he smiled as he recognized Harvey's number and took the call.

"Hey Harv," He said, "What's up?"

"Have you got your costume yet?" Harvey wondered, "Because Mel just saw Trish and Trish said you were going to the store to get one today. I can't believe you waited till the last minute! I got mine weeks ago, I found it online."

And he laughed.

"Wait till you see it, you'll _love_ it!"

"What is it?" Vic wondered.

"I'm not telling!" Harvey replied, "You'll have to wait until tonight for the big surprise!"

"Well don't count on me turning up in costume," Vic told him, "I've just been told there's probably nothing left for Halloween. I'm just waiting to find out."

"Okay, good luck with it. And if they don't have anything left I've got a sheet that Mel said I can cut up so you can come as a ghost!"

Vic gave a sigh.

Harvey was being his usual happy self thinking of a way to solve the problem. But being stuck with wearing a stupid sheet with holes cut into it wasn't exactly a comfortable _or_ practical way to spend the night...

"I'll remember that. It might be a good idea." He said, lying convincingly.

Harvey said he'd see him later on and Vic hung up.

Then the girl came out from the back of the shop.

She smiled at Vic.

"You're in luck!" She exclaimed, "There was one costume left and it's just about your size."

Vic smiled back at her.

Then his smile faded as he looked down at what she had just placed on the counter:

_It was a red and green striped sweater and an old fedora hat. There was something else draped on top of it – a glove with fake razors attached._

"_Freddy Krueger?"_

Vic took in a sharp breath; his mouth had gone dry as a chill passed through him.

The girl shrugged.

"Well we stock all kinds of costumes...not all based on fictional characters, either. But this being Springwood, we don't get many people wanting this costume. I guess that's why it's the last one."

Vic was still staring at the costume.

The girl spoke up again.

"You're taking it?"

Vic nodded, ignoring the horrible memories the sight of that sweater and glove threw up in his mind.

"Sure." He said reluctantly as he took out his credit card.

Moments later he had paid for the costume and the girl had handed it to him in a bag.

Vic inwardly cringed as he noticed the fake Freddy glove was packed in such a way that the razors poked out of the bag.

"Thanks." He said quietly, turning to leave the store.

"Have a good time at the party," She said brightly, "Is it here in Springwood?"

Vic had reached the door.

He looked back at her and as he spoke again her smile vanished.

"_Yes it is,"_ He replied, _"It's on Elm Street."_

And he opened the door and walked out carrying the bag that contained the Freddy Krueger costume.

The girl gave a shiver and put it down to the cold breeze coming in as Vic had opened the door.

"_Happy Halloween."_ She said quietly, now feeling a definite chill that was nothing to do with the time of year as she thought about the awful irony of the costume he had just hired.

But Vic said nothing in reply; he just closed the door behind him and walked away from the store, carrying the Freddy costume over the street to where his car was parked.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"_I don't believe this!"_

Trish had made the same statement twice in five minutes.

And as she looked at Vic, dressed in the striped sweater and hat, she shook her head as they stood together outside their house, dressed for the party and ready to go over to Harvey's place.

Vic noticed the disapproving look in her eyes.

"It was the only costume they had left!"

She glanced down at his hands – he was missing a piece of the outfit...

"If you're going as Freddy you might as well put on the glove."

The mention of that glove sent a shiver down his spine and the healing wounds on his shoulder ached in sympathy with his plight.

"I don't _like_ the glove, it's creepy. I don't even like the costume. I'm only doing this to please Harvey!"

She stared at him.

"_Harvey_ told you to dress as Fred Krueger? I knew that guy could be dumb sometimes but that's just ridiculous!"

"No, Harvey _didn't_ ask me to do that, he just asked me to wear a costume. It was this or one of his old bed sheets with holes cut into it!"

Trish looked him up and down and her cat's ears sparkled as the light above them shone down from the porch.

_"You should have taken the sheet."_ She replied.

As she walked off towards the gate, Vic hurried after her.

He knew there was little he could really do in life to make Trish happy these days but he wanted them to try and get along at the party...

"Could you at least wait for me?"

Trish stepped out of the gate and he followed quickly, catching up with her.

"Why?"

"Because we should turn up together."

Trish gave a sigh.

"Vic, this is _Elm Street_. A Krueger costume is in _really_ bad taste! "

They crossed the street together, as they walked through the gate and went down the path to where the outside of the house was decked out with balloon ghosts that bobbed on the breeze and an animated witch bent stiffly and cackled, music and laughter filtered out from the open windows, warming up the chilly evening.

"I guess it could have been worse." Trish said as she rang the door bell, "At least you didn't put the horror make up on."

Vic smiled.

_"You probably think I'm ugly enough without it."_

And Trish smiled back at him, which came as a pleasant surprise.

"I've never found you unattractive." She admitted, and his heart skipped a beat. It was a remark that made him think that perhaps there was still hope for his marriage.

"So you _still_ find me attractive?"

"Yes I do." She told him,_" But you've changed, Vic. You've changed a lot."_

And her words stung and he pushed away the urge to ask her what she meant by that, he was seized by the need to tell her again it wasn't his fault that he got shot and that bullet changed his life...he wasn't even sure what the hell she meant anyway – he knew he was more forgetful than he used to be, sometimes his temper was short too and he couldn't sleep like he used to – but those things aside, he was sure he was still the same guy, it just seemed as if she had stopped loving him, and the more he thought about that the more it dawned on him that she had stopped loving him _long_ before the shooting ever happened...

And then the door opened.

Harvey smiled brightly

"Vic, Trish! Come on in!"

And Trish greeted Harvey with a smile and went inside.

* * *

Vic stayed right where he was on the doorstep, because he was busy staring at Harvey's costume.

Harvey had briefly stared at Vic's costume too, but only for a second.

"You should have let me make you into a ghost." He said, "Krueger...wow, that's creepy! But it's Halloween...I guess its okay to come as a real life monster. You know Larry, that guy who lives at the end of the street, the one who usually turns up as a zombie?"

Vic shook his head.

"No I don't know him, Harvey. I've only just got back here after more than twenty five years away, I have no idea who comes to your parties or what they dress up like."

"Well," Harvey replied, "He's not come as a zombie this year; he's come as a _real life_ monster."

"Who's he come as?" Vic wondered.

"Teen Wolf." Harvey replied.

Vic started to laugh.

"Teen Wolf is a _fictional_ character, Harv! It was just a movie."

Harvey's eyes got wider.

"Really? I thought it was based on a true story..."

Vic was still laughing as he shook his head.

"No, it wasn't true."

"_But Jurassic Park was." _He stated, "I _know_ I'm right about that one!"

Vic looked into his eyes and saw such sincerity there.

He smiled and shook his head again.

"No it wasn't!"

Harvey's eyes widened in surprise.

"Really?"

And Vic looked at his best friend, he looked him up and down as he stood there seeming very out of place at his own party:

It was Halloween, but Harvey, who had bought his costume weeks in advance, despite having lots of time to choose an outfit, had chosen _this_ – he was wearing a furry pink and white rabbit costume, complete with big floppy ears, a painted on nose, stuck on whiskers and two rabbit's teeth...

"_Who_ are you supposed to be?" He asked.

Harvey smiled.

"I'm the Easter Bunny!" He said happily.

"An _evil _Easter bunny?" Vic wondered.

Harvey was confused as he looked back at his best friend.

"Of course I'm not evil! How could I be evil, I'm the Easter Bunny!"

"But it's _Halloween_..."

Harvey smiled and held out the basket he was carrying that was decorated with ribbon.

"Have a mini chocolate egg..."

Vic laughed and shook his head.

"No thanks, let's get inside, it's cold out here."

And Harvey stepped back and opened the door wider and Vic went into the house to join the party.

* * *

Nancy was standing outside the place that used to be her house.

Here in the other world, it still seemed as if she _did_ live there.

But this bright, warm place was between worlds, the point she could cross to when she needed to get away from Freddy and he was powerless to stop her from doing that - but she couldn't stay here too long or the world would dim and once again she would find herself back in his boiler room, his own personal Hell...

But now as she stood in Elm Street, in daylight in this other world, her friends joined her seemingly unharmed now by Freddy's knives.

_They were free now._

But they chose to come here, to reach her once more.

Sometimes she felt guilty about that, she had told them she wanted them to go and know peace but despite understanding that she had a strange bond with Freddy that was made by her own choosing that they found disgusting, it didn't stop them being there for her.

_Nothing_ would ever break their bond because friendship was a powerful thing, stretching on even beyond death...

Tina Gray had a look of determination in her eyes as she fixed her gaze on Nancy.

"Vic Fox had nothing to do with Freddy's murder. And neither did his parents, Nancy. This is about something _else_, so what's going on? Krueger hasn't crossed over into the human dream world for almost three decades, why is he doing it now?"

Nancy looked back at her feeling helpless.

"I don't know why! All I know is this; he was filled with anger and rage at how and why he died and I know he _never _should have turned into a killer but he did. And when it was over he stayed in hell. He'll be in hell forever; don't you see what kind of pain he's in?"

Tina glared at her.

"_Pain?_ He ripped me to pieces, he got Rod blamed and then murdered him too! And then he killed Glen."

Nancy blinked back tears.

Rod Lane put his arm around Tina.

"You can't blame us for having no sympathy for Krueger."

"_We just want the killing to stop." _

Glen had stepped forward.

Nancy felt an ache in her heart as she looked into the eyes of her first love.

"You think I _want_ him to kill Vic?"

"No, Nancy." Glen replied, "Of course not! But you can't watch him forever. You can't be there all the time and sooner or later he's going to kill your cousin unless you figure out why this is happening."

Nancy looked to her three friends, who stood there waiting for her answer.

"I don't know why this is happening." She stated, "If I knew, I'd do something to stop it! Freddy stopped killing a long time ago. He's just as evil, still full of rage but it's not all his rage, a lot of it is the hatred that was given to him by the people of Springwood! They fed that into his soul, called him a manic, murderer...he carried it with him into his own hell. He was falsely accused of murder so he became in death what they called him in life. I'm not saying _pity the guy,_ I'm just trying to explain , that's the way I know it to be and I _don't_ know why he's after my cousin. Vic did nothing to him; his parents were nothing to do with Freddy's death. It doesn't make sense to me either."

Glen spoke up again.

"There's a way back for him if he takes off the glove. Have you told him that, Nancy?"

She gave a sigh of frustration.

"Of course I have! He won't listen."

Glenn leaned closer, speaking low as he stood before his former girlfriend.

"You'd better make him understand." He told her, "Because if you don't, things thing will get out of control around here. Freddy killed us to settle a score. If he kills Vic I don't think he'll stop at just one death. He'll want more. You _have_ to stop him, Nancy... _And where is he right now?_"

Hearing those words made her feel as if alarm bells had just started ringing.

She turned sharply to see a tunnel behind her, dark and smoky where flickering flames burned within - _yet instinct told her Freddy was not there..._

"_Oh no..."_ She said in a hushed voice, and Nancy ran into the darkness, through to the boiler room, where she would keep on running until the walls melted away and she had passed through into the real world, into the dreamtime where Freddy was lying in wait for Vic Fox...

* * *

_The party had gone well._

It had gone well until it was coming to the end and then Vic looked around and wondered where Trish had got to.

The last of the guests were leaving, it was almost two in the morning and as he left the front room where Harvey was sitting on the sofa knocking back his last beer, he glanced around feeling puzzled that he saw no sign of his wife.

Trish had enjoyed herself that night, talking with people she hadn't seen for years who she recalled from the old days.

She had also been drinking heavily and he wondered if she had gone home, but he was sure he would have seen her leave because he had spent a large part of the night with Harvey, out in the hallway and then in the front room - and the front door had been visible the whole time and he hadn't seen her leave...

Vic quickly went up the hall and through to the kitchen where bottles and glasses were cluttered along with left over food.

Then he heard her voice:

_Trish sounded upset_.

Following the sound of her voice, he made his way towards the kitchen door. It was partly open and she was out on the lawn all alone, she partly turned and by moonlight he saw her cat make up had run down her face in dirty looking streaks. But she was drunk and she didn't see him there and she carried on talking quietly and tearfully into her cell phone:

"I hate this, honey." She said to the caller, "Every day I'm with him I think about what happened..._Why didn't you just get one good fucking shot at him and he would have died! _Instead he had to go and _survive_ and now I'm stuck here in Springwood with him and you _know_ I want to be with you..."

Vic's heart was racing as he broke out in a cold sweat and felt as if the ground had just slipped away from beneath his feet:

_Trish just admitted to having him shot?_

He didn't want to hear any of it but shock gave him no choice as he stood there frozen to the spot and she continued to speak:

"I just wanted him out of the way. Yes, I _did_ want Vic dead. I was thinking about the business and the life insurance and how I'd be free to be with you – but I regretted it afterwards, when I saw him in the hospital. I still don't want to be with him but I could never do anything to hurt him again, not now, I feel so sorry for him...and it's all my fault..."

And as she carried on talking to her lover, Vic stepped away from the doorway, turning back to the kitchen as he wiped tears from his eyes.

He left the kitchen and went back through to the front room.

_Harvey was his first thought; he needed him._

_He didn't know what he was going to do about what he had heard but he knew for sure he needed to be with Harvey.._.

But when he walked in he just found Mel starting to clear away glasses and party food.

"Where's Harv?"

His voice was hushed and Mel adjusted her witches' hat and looked at him curiously.

"Are you okay, Vic? You look upset."

He shook his head.

"I'm just tired. I was thinking, I might crash here tonight. Would you tell her, tell Trish when you see her, I wasn't feeling so good so I crashed out upstairs, okay?"

She nodded.

"I'll tell her. But are you_ sure_ you're okay?"

"I just need to lie down." He replied

"He's upstairs." She told him.

"Who?"

The confusion that clouded her eyes grew deeper.

"_Harvey!_ You just asked me where he was? He went upstairs to take off his costume."

"Thanks." Vic replied, and left the room.

* * *

He went up the stairs quickly and quietly, keen to avoid the possibility of bumping into his wife.

As Vic got to the top of the stairs he headed for the bedroom just as Harvey came out of the bathroom, he was changed out of his costume and showered now.

"It was a _great_ party!" He exclaimed.

Then his smile vanished as the two men met in the middle of the upper hall and Harvey saw the shocked look in his friend's eyes - Vic had turned deathly pale and he looked scared, too...

"What's the matter?" He wondered.

Vic shook his head.

"I don't want to talk about it tonight; I just want to stay here with you if that's okay. I've got some thinking to do. It's pretty serious stuff."

"So tell me about it, I'm listening"

"_Not right now."_

Harvey, who had no clue just how serious his problem was, gave a sigh.

"Okay." He said. Then he yawned and blinked sleepy eyes.

"I don't know if I'm half drunk or just tired. Take the spare room; I'm going downstairs to help Mel clean up."

And he patted his shoulder.

"Don't worry." Harvey told him, and as he looked into his eyes Vic saw the reassurance he desperately needed, "It'll be okay – trust me."

"Thanks." Vic said quietly, wishing life could really be that simple.

Then he turned away from Harvey and went to the end of the hall and into the guest room, where he closed the door and locked it, needing to feel the security of that bolt sliding across because he didn't know how he could ever be even remotely close to Trish again, not now he knew everything.

He lay on the bed with nothing but the moonlight for company as he sobbed, feeling pain and betrayal and hatred for her and then sadness for himself and all he had been through – all because she had wanted him out of the way, to get her hands on his money and leave him for another man:

_She pitied him now? _

_Trish pitied him so much she couldn't hurt him again?_

_Knowing that brought no consolation..._

Sleep was far from his mind and he had stayed away from the booze and he knew if he went home he could take a sleeper and then he would definitely sleep, that was something he needed right now; a deep sleep that would wipe out everything at least until morning when he could face all he knew in the cold light of day and perhaps feel a little stronger about it all.

He shivered and pulled the covers over himself, not sure if he was cold because of the season or because of the shock of finding out the truth. As he started to warm up he closed his eyes and thought of Harvey and wished he was right here beside him - _life would have been so much easier and happier if him and Harvey had stayed together back in their youth..._

That was his last thought.

Then the shock of finding out what Trish had done, that need to go deep in the dark and find peace away from the world caught up with him under the covers as Vic fell asleep - without his pills. It was a light sleep and one not destined to last long without interruption to that brief, peaceful rest - _but after finding out the shooting had been no accident and learning his own wife was to blame, all thoughts of Fred Krueger had temporarily slipped from his mind..._

* * *

Harvey had fallen into bed and put his arm around Trish and started to softly snore even before she had put out the light.

Mel looked at him, smiling fondly as she gave him a gentle kiss but he didn't feel it and just slept on.

"Good night Honey." She said warmly, and got settled and comfortable in the dark, she put her arm around Harvey and closed her eyes and soon she was fast asleep beside him.

Harvey didn't know how long he'd slept, but when he heard a noise downstairs he got up and blinked sleepy eyes and ran his fingers thought his messy hair.

He looked at the time and gave a groan: It was three a.m., he had been asleep for less than an hour and someone was _still _here? Then he remembered Vic had wanted to stay over. He thought about how upset his friend had seemed even though he had refused to tell him what was wrong.

And with Vic on his mind, Harvey got out of bed and quietly left the room.

Mel turned over but carried on sleeping, unaware of the danger that now lurked downstairs – not the kind of false threat from the plastic fakery of Halloween but a very real threat, in the form of Freddy Krueger - the _real _one this time...

* * *

Freddy stood in the shadows by the door to the laundry room, the light was out in there and he waited and smiled as he heard Harvey walk into the kitchen.

The light snapped on.

Harvey looked around: The left over food had been cleared away, there was a lot of washing up left in the sink but apart from the odd glass and plate and ashtray, it was looking pretty good considering they'd only ended the party a short while ago; the mess that was left over was easily manageable in the morning...

"_Vic?" _He called out.

Harvey got no reply.

He frowned, feeling sure having lived his whole life in this house he ought to know where a sound was coming from any where in the house in the middle of the night – he was _positive _he'd heard someone moving about in the kitchen...

_Yet there was nobody in here._

"Vic?" He said in a lower voice,"Are you in here?"

And then he heard a footfall in the shadow of the laundry room and someone in a Fred Krueger costume beckoned to him with a razor-finger of his glove.

"Are you playing games?" Harvey said warmly as amusement sparkled in his eyes, "Now _why_ would you want to lure me down here in the middle of the night and get me alone in the _dark_ laundry room?"

He heard a low chuckle coming from the shadows.

Vic's eyes widened.

"You want me to come in there with you?"

The man in the Kruger costume shifted forward a little, enough for Vic to see his silhouette.

He nodded slowly and beckoned again with a gleaming blade.

"I thought you left that glove at home?" Harvey wondered.

The blade was still beckoning.

"Harvey..." Whispered a low voice, "Come over here...I've got a surprise for you..."

And Harvey's jaw dropped.

Then his eyes sparkled and a big smile spread across his face.

"Well... back in the old days I always _did_ like your surprises!" He exclaimed.

_And he went into the darkened laundry room and snapped on the light._

He stared in shock at the face of Freddy Krueger as he smiled at him with an evil sneer.

"_What you think now, asshole?"_ He said gruffly as he brandished his blades.

Harvey's eyes were wide as saucers...but only for a minute - and then he started to a laugh.

"I can't believe you put all that make up on _after_ the party, Vic! It's a total waste of time; it's three a.m. on the first of November now!"

Freddy glared at him.

A distinct lack of fear from this man was weakening his power, weakening his ability to cling to solidity in this dream world...

Harvey stepped closer, went around the back of him and slid his arms around his waist and nuzzled against his neck.

"Oh Vic I know we shouldn't be doing this but it's fun...and it's harmless, I won't tell anyone..."

_Freddy was shaking with rage._

With every kiss to the back of his neck, for every second Harvey held him closer and thought about Vic, he felt his power sliding away as sure as sand would slip through an hourglass; he had sensed the two men were close but hadn't predicted this – Harvey _loved_ Vic. Love was a strong emotion, one that watered down the rage and fury and hatred and all the other things inside Freddy Krueger that made him strong as a dream demon; he thrived on hatred and fear - not _this_, not something that made his solidity fade out:

_Love._

_It was something he couldn't stand up to..._

Harvey squeezed him tighter and pressed his body against him as he laughed softy into his ear.

"This brings back memories, you and me, close like this...come on, Vic..._Give me a kiss_..."

Freddy wrenched himself out of Harvey's embrace, giving a roar as he raised his glove and thrust his knives through Harvey's body.

_And the knives passed through him, melting invisible, useless and harmless as Freddy's power had been diminished from this place by Harvey's closed eyes and the feelings that flowed from him as he waited for Vic's kiss._

Harvey, who knew nothing of the way Freddy had vanished, waited for a few seconds and then he opened his eyes, frowning as he found himself in the laundry room all alone.

"Vic?" He wondered, "Where did you go?"

Then Harvey blinked and the world fell to darkness and he caught his breath at the suddenness of it all.

He sat up and as he realized he was in his own bed once more, he turned on the light, blinking some more as he looked around him and then saw Mel raise her head from the pillow looking so tired she could barely keep her eyes open.

"What's the matter, Harvey?" She murmured.

Harvey still had a smile on his face as he thought about Vic.

"Nothing," He replied, "I just had a dream... _a really good one.._."

"That's nice." Mel replied, turning over and giving a sigh as she gave into her tiredness once more.

And Harvey turned out the light and settled back down to sleep, smiling in the dark as he thought about that dream of him and Vic in the laundry room and wished he could get back to it, even if Vic's Freddy make up _had_ been a little bit scary...

* * *

_Vic woke up at sunrise._

He woke with a jolt as shock hit him to think that he had been sleeping, actually _naturally_ sleeping for once when it was almost impossible under normal circumstances then he remembered he'd skipped sleep the night before Halloween too, and then it all came flooding back to him about the shock he had suffered over Trish and her conversation with her lover...

Vic had got up still dressed in his costume and gone along the hallway and quietly opened Harvey's bedroom door.

Harvey was sleeping deeply with his arm around Mel.

Vic breathed a sigh of relief; _everyone was safe, he'd been lucky..._

He left the house closing the front door quietly, getting a creeping chill pass through him as he got nearer to his own house and it was nothing to do with the sharpness of the early morning:

_He was going home to his wife._

_He was going home to the wife who had asked her lover to shoot him dead and make it look like a robbery that had gone wrong..._

Vic drew his key from his pocket and pushed it into the lock, turning it quietly as he let himself into his house.

He shut the door and took off the Freddy hat and sweater and left it on the table in the hallway.

And then he stopped at the bottom of the stairs and slowly looked up, hearing the water running.

Trish was up early too, she was in the bathroom...

His body felt like lead as he began to climb the stairs.

As he went up those stairs he recalled the struggle in the rain with the gunman, he recalled the flash as the gun went off..._what had he said to him before he pulled that gun?_

Vic thought about it and suddenly a memory he thought lost fell into place:

"_Vic Fox?"_ He'd asked him, "You _are_ Vic Fox?"

Looking up from the driver's seat of his car, through the open window at the hooded man who stood shadowed in the rain, he had wished it was daylight because he didn't know his voice and he needed to see his face.

"_How come you know me?"_ He'd asked him.

And the stranger had pulled a gun, they'd struggled and then the boom of two shots had shattered his body. He remembered a rush of rainfall and then nothing, nothing but blackness until he woke up in the hospital after having a bullet dug out of his head...

_He knew for sure now._

_Trish had tried to have him killed._

_That bitch had put him through hell; she had smashed his life to pieces as sure as if she had fired those shots herself..._

_He knew he was still hurting, but hurting could wait, he had the rest of his life to hurt over what that bullet to his head had done to his life._

_Right now all he felt was cold, murderous rage and it was getting more and more difficult to control with every step he took closer to the top of the stairs._

Vic took a deep breath and tried to stay calm as he walked along the upper hallway.

The sound of the running water grew louder as he opened the bedroom door.

He went inside and saw the cat costume Trish had worn the night before draped over a chair. The bathroom door was open and steam was escaping from inside.

"Trish..." He called out.

"I'm in the bath." She called back to him, then as she relaxed in the warm foamy water that carried the scent of magnolia she turned and her eyes widened in surprise to see him standing in the doorway, fixing her with a strange kind of look that she had never seen before. _There was something different about him, something cold and detached and it made her skin crawl although she wasn't quite sure why..._

"Mel told me you crashed out at the party." She said, "I'm not surprised, you looked tired all evening. Did you have a good time?"

And then her eyes clouded with confusion as Vic, who had not shared any closeness with her for a long time, sat on the edge of the bath and slipped his hand into the warm soapy water and started to rub her back.

_"It was an interesting evening."_ Vic said quietly.

His hand slid up to the back of her neck and she caught her breath as he started to gently massage her there.

"Very interesting." He added, "I found out something I didn't know..."

His fingertips felt light as feathers as he stroked the back of her neck.

"What did you find out?" She wondered, giving a sigh as she started to remember just how great his touch could be.

Vic's hand gripped the back of her neck like a vice as he spoke through gritted teeth.

"_I found out you tried to kill me!"_

And then he had both hands on her, he caught the look of terror in her eyes then she was gone with a splash under the water, thrashing and fighting and useless against him as adrenaline pumped though his body. He held her down firmly under the water until the thrashing stopped and bloody bubbles came out of her nose and the foam was at the sides of the bath and he could see into the warm water, he could see her lying dead in the bath tub...

Coldness ran down to his bones as he was hit with the realization that he had just killed Trish. _He had murdered his wife..._

The bath was clouding up red, as if blood was pumping out of her; he could smell her blood mixing now with the scent of magnolia.

Vic blinked, and then drew his hand out from the water, staring in horror at Freddy's glove, this was _not_ the costume glove - this was the _real _one and as the water turned crimson and the glove slipped from his hand, Vic gave a cry of shock as he looked down at his wife's shredded body.

"_I didn't do that..."_

A low cackle came from the doorway.

He looked up sharply to see Krueger standing there, now he was wearing the glove and it was dripping with Trish's blood.

"They'll execute you for this." Krueger said with a cruel smile on his face, "This state has just brought back the death penalty!"

Vic gave a sob.

"I didn't mean to kill her! _You made me do it!_"

And in the distance Vic heard the wail of sirens, the cops were already on the way...

"_I didn't mean to kill her!"_ He yelled as tears ran down his face.

Vic yelled out again, struggling as the cops pinned him down to cuff him.

* * *

Vic fought like crazy as he was grabbed.

"_VIC!"_

He opened his eyes and gave a sob, seeing Harvey leaning over him.

"_Help me..."_

And Harvey, who was sitting on his bed, slowly let go of his wrists as he stopped fighting.

"You had a nightmare." He told him, fixing his friend with a worried expression.

Vic sat up and wiped his eyes with the back of his shaking hand.

"_Nightmare?"_

Harvey nodded.

"You slept in late so me and Mel left you to rest. Then you started screaming and I came up here and you looked like you were fighting with the covers!"

Vic got up and looked down at himself, seeing he was still in his costume - and that did nothing to reassure him that this had in fact all been nothing more than a bad dream.

"Maybe you need to go home." Harvey suggested, "You know, sleep in your own bed, relax..."

Vic looked out the window across the street to his own house.

Everything looked peaceful and still.

_Perhaps it was too still...he was afraid to go home in case he found Trish dead in the bathtub..._

"I'm going home right now." He said to Harvey.

Then as he reached the door he glanced back at him.

Vic's eyes were wide with fear and his face was pale.

"I can't do this on my own."

"Do what?" His best friend wondered.

As he spoke again fear reflected in his voice now.

"_Go home."_ Vic stated," _I can't go home by myself. Come with me, Harvey..."_


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

_"Why did you want me to come with you?"_

Vic heard Harvey's voice as he walked beside him but he gave no reply; his blood felt like ice in his veins as he kept his gaze fixed on his house.

"What's this about? Did you have another fight with Trish last night?"

His throat felt so tight he had to force his answer out.

"No...No, I don't _think_ so..."

"You can't remember? Either you had a fight with her or you didn't..."

"_I hope I didn't." _He said quietly.

They had reached the front door.

Vic put his hand in his pocket to take out his keys.

The keys slipped from his grasp and Harvey reached down and picked them up for him, giving him an odd glance.

"I don't know what's wrong with you," He said as he raised the key to the lock, "But you'd better start talking to me soon. You look like you're falling apart, Vic."

"I heard Trish talking on the phone last night. _She was talking to her lover_."

Harvey lowered the keys and stared at him.

"_Are you sure?"_

Vic nodded and as Harvey saw how pale and scared he looked, his voice dropped to a whisper.

"This was what you meant last night, when you said you had something on your mind?"

Vic stepped off the porch and led him around to the side of the house.

He glanced up, checking the windows were closed and then he leaned against the wall, taking in a breath of fresh air as he wondered what he would find when they went inside the house.

_Suddenly it was easier to talk because he was alone with Harvey._

He blinked away tears as he told him the truth.

"I heard her talking to her lover on the phone last night, I don't know who he is but she was saying how much she wanted to be with him instead of me- "

He drew in a sharp breath and blinked again but this time he couldn't hold his tears back.

"Trish said he should've done a better job of shooting me – she said she wouldn't hurt me again because she feels sorry for me now..."

And as he gave a sob Harvey pulled him tight against his chest, stifling his sobs as he wrapped his arms around him.

_"It was her? She had you shot? "_

Vic was still weeping.

Harvey kept hold of him as he stepped back, forcing Vic to straighten up again.

"Come on, pull yourself together..."

He reached out and wiped the tears from his face, then kept his hands firmly on his shoulders.

"Look at me, Vic...Look at me and _listen _to me..."

Vic looked into Harvey's eyes feeling as if he was sure he would have nothing in life to cling to if this man was not here for him, but Harvey was here and he listened to him, he drew strength from his closeness because it was all he had left in life to be sure of now...

"Are you listening?"

Vic nodded.

Harvey looked into his eyes.

"Great," Harvey said, "Keep _on l_istening. You say you believe your wife tried to kill you? You're _sure_ about that?"

Vic nodded again.

His tears had stopped now and he focussed on Harvey as his friend spoke again.

"I have one question and _don't_ get mad at me... Vic, did you take something last night?"

"No!" He exclaimed, "We're not teenagers and this isn't the eighties any more, Harvey! Of course I didn't! I haven't done drugs at parties for many years!"

"Okay, I believe you. So you seriously think Trish had you shot?"

"_I know it for sure."_

"Then you have to go to the police. I'll come with you."

Vic blinked back more tears and Harvey just wanted to hold him but he knew if he did he would start sobbing all over again and he needed Vic to keep himself together.

"Let's go right now."

_"No!"_

Harvey stared at him.

"Are you crazy? She tried to kill you – it's not something you can just forget about!"

And Vic turned his gaze up towards the closed bathroom window as he thought about his dream.

"I know that, but I just need to go in there and make sure..."

He stopped before he said too much but as he looked back at Harvey he caught the look in his eyes; Harvey was utterly confused by now.

"_Make sure of what?"_

Vic took the keys from his hand and started to walk back around to the front door.

"What the hell's going on?" Harvey demanded as he followed him, "I don't understand why you want to act like nothing's happened!"

Vic turned back sharply as they reached the front door again.

"I just..."

He thought about it.

_This had been bad timing- if he went in there with Harvey and they found Trish dead after what he had just told him, the evidence would point straight back to him..._

Vic gave a heavy sigh.

"Sometimes I get weird dreams. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I dreamed it all."

Harvey frowned.

"I don't understand...are you saying you don't know if she really said that on the phone?"

Vic hated lying to his best friend, but right now he felt he had no choice as he didn't know if his wife was dead or alive.

"I'm not sure. I don't often manage to fall asleep without my meds, and when I do, sometimes I have vivid dreams...so vivid they seem real."

_Now _Harvey understood.

"So let's get in there and you can go and see Trish – I guess if you see her it will kind of bring you back to reality, am I right?"

Vic nodded and said no more, sliding the key into the lock and opening the front door. They stepped inside and Vic shut the door behind them, wondering if there had been any truth to his nightmare...

* * *

Vic stood in the hallway and listened but heard no sound.

Harvey broke the silence.

"Why are we just standing here like this?"

Vic looked up the stairs and a shiver ran down to his bones. As he looked back at Harvey his eyes grew wider and Harvey saw real fear there, so deep it seemed to run to absolute terror.

"Vic," He said quietly, "Level with me. Because I think something _else_ is going on, I don't think you dreamed she tried to kill you, either – I think you found out the truth and then maybe something happened here. _Talk to me!_"

Vic drew in a frightened breath and as he blinked back more tears he could barely get his words out.

"_It wasn't me, Harvey...I think Freddy killed her!"_

Harvey's eyes grew wider and his face paled as he looked at Vic, standing there shaking and tearful - and still wearing the red and green sweater that was a part of his Fred Krueger costume...

"_You killed her?_ Is that what you mean? Because if you're telling me you found she had you shot and you came back here and had a fight with her I'm thinking maybe there was an accident. Maybe you pushed her and she fell - I _know_ you didn't mean it, Vic. _But I don't think the cops would see it that way_."

He took a step closer and put his hands on Vic's shoulders. As he looked into his eyes Vic was surprised at the strength he saw in his gaze as Harvey spoke again:

"You and me will get rid of the body. I'll help you. I _know_ you didn't mean to hurt her, I know it was an accident but I get why it happened and I won't let you go to jail for the rest of your life over this – we'll figure this out together, don't worry."

And he pulled him into a tight embrace and hugged him.

"Why would you do that for me?"

As he pulled back Harvey looked into his eyes once more.

"Because I love you." He promised him, then he gave him another hug and let him go.

"Where's the body? Are you _sure _she's dead?"

Vic stared at him and then he shook his head.

"I don't know if she's dead..."

Harvey's voice dropped to a whisper.

_"What did you do to her, Vic?"_

Vic shook his head again and his voice trembled as he spoke.

"It wasn't me – it really _was _Fred Krueger! It's like he pulled me into the scene to screw around with my head! He killed her, he killed her with his knives...I thought I'd got mad at her and drowned her in the bath tub but I _know_ I didn't do that – he had me in a _dream_ doing that! He'd already killed her; he just wanted me to know about it."

"_Oh shit..."_ Harvey whispered.

Vic looked up the stairway again. He knew they could wait here forever and it would solve nothing – the truth was upstairs and he had to go up there and face it no matter how desperately he wished he could run away and hide.

"We'll go up together." Harvey told him, stepping first onto the stairs.

As Harvey went up Vic followed close behind him, with every step that drew him closer to the top he knew he had never been more thankful for Harvey's closeness or loyalty than he was at that moment.

"_Do you think I'm crazy?"_

They were in the upper hallway now.

Harvey looked Vic in the eye.

"No," He promised him, "You dreamed about Freddy? I believe you."

And the two men made their way closer to the bedroom.

The door was open and they went inside and both stood in silence:

The bathroom door was partly open but no steam escaped and no sound of running water could be heard.

Vic glanced around the bedroom and noticed Trish had left her cat costume draped over a chair just like he had seen it in his dream. He swallowed hard as his throat tightened and he exchanged a glance with Harvey.

"One of us has to look in the bathroom..."

Harvey took in a deep breath.

"I'll go."

And he stepped forward, with Vic following behind as he pushed open the bathroom door.

Both men stared at the scene that greeted them; a shocked silence lasted several minutes as they stood there looking at the almost immaculate bathroom that was marred by one strange sight:

_The bath tub was empty, but there was a foamy ring of soap scum around the side of the tub where the waterline had been; it was a mixture of soap and a red stain and the scent it gave off was the magnolia bubble bath that Trish always used, mingled in with the smell of blood..._

Vic dragged in a shocked breath and stared at the bath tub.

"He _killed_ her? _Oh shit, what did he do with her, Harvey? Where's Trish? Where's her body?_"

"I don't know." Harvey replied quietly as he nervously looked around the bathroom but saw no clues left behind.

Vic went closer to the bath and noticed a small pool of reddened water that had collected around the plug hole.

"The drain's blocked...there's something down there..."

And Vic pushed his fingers into the reddened water. As he grabbed something small and cold he tugged on it, he had to tug hard to free it but it was tangled up with something and Vic tugged harder and finally it came free. As he pulled out the blockage, bloody water drained away with a gurgle.

"What is it?" Harvey wondered.

Vic opened his closed hand and his eyes widened in horror at the sight of his wife's wedding ring tangled up with strands of her hair - those strands were still attached to a small, torn off piece of scalp tissue.

He gave a cry of shock and tossed the ring still tangled with the hair back into the bath.

"What did he do?" Harvey said in a hushed voice, _"Did he drag her down the plug hole?"_

Vic was trembling as he went over to the toilet, then he fell to his knees and threw up so violently he felt as if it would never stop.

* * *

A while later, as Vic lay on his bed curled up like a frightened child as he gripped at the pillow and wished he could lose the taste of vomit from his mouth, all he could hear was Harvey scrubbing out the bath tub. The smell of bleach was creeping into the room and all Vic felt able to do was lay there, tasting vomit and smelling bleach while he listened to his best friend cleaning up his bathroom.

Finally Harvey came out of the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

His face looked pale as he took off rubber gloves and shoved them into a bag that was going into the trash.

"Is her ring in there?" He asked quietly.

Harvey shook his head.

"I cleaned it up, I'll get rid of that through a guy I know who buys and sells gold."

"But it was her wedding ring."

"And who's gonna get the blame if the cops start thinking she's dead?" Harvey asked him, "You, or Krueger?"

And Vic nodded; he understood exactly what Harvey was talking about - _the cops just wouldn't believe that Trish had been killed by a long dead murderer who had got inside his dreams..._

"And you really need to get some sleep." Harvey added as he noticed how shattered Vic looked.

But his friend just looked at him fearfully.

"No! He killed Trish; he'll be after me next! He's already tried to kill me once!"

And Harvey went back into the bathroom and came out with a glass of water that he set down next to his bed along with his sleeping pills.

"Take a sleeper, Vic. You don't dream when you're on the downers."

Vic shook his head

"I don't want to go to sleep."

Then as he looked up at Harvey, he still had fear in his eyes.

"What if _did_ kill her, Harvey? What if Freddy made me drown her and then he cut her up afterwards?"

Harvey thought about it.

"_Maybe I can prove that you were no where near Trish last night."_

And Harvey glanced out the window, noticing Mel's car was leaving the driveway.

"And Mel is going shopping." He told him, "Now is the _perfect_ time for me to test my theory!"

Even at a time a bad as this, Harvey was able to smile, because he was sure he had just found a way to prove Vic's innocence.

Vic sat up, suddenly feeling a little stronger simply because Harvey was being so positive now.

"What theory?" He wondered.

"Come with me and I'll show you." Harvey told him.

* * *

Ten minutes later Vic was on the sofa next Harvey feeling much safer simply because he was still with his best friend and he was back at Harvey's place, too. The way he felt right now made him wonder if he would ever go home to his own place again after knowing what had happened there...

Harvey began to play the tape belonging to his CCTV system, the one that he'd installed a few years back after there had been some break ins around the neighborhood.

Harvey set the recording on to fast forward and they sat there watching every angle of the house from midnight onwards.

"See?" Harvey said as the final frame came to a close, "After the party the guests went home. But not you – there's no image of you on this recording at all – that's because you didn't leave my house last night, Vic! You had nothing to do with what happened to Trish, you were here with me and Mel the whole time!"

Vic breathed a sigh of relief; this didn't change the fact that Krueger had killed Trish but at least he knew the dream about playing a part in her murder had been just a dream, a terrible one manipulated by Freddy...

He turned to Harvey just as he switched off the tape.

"Why would Freddy Krueger kill my wife, Harvey?" And once again, tears filled Vic's eyes.

"I know we didn't have a happy marriage and I know she wanted me dead but it _doesn't _mean I'm glad she's gone, especially knowing the horrible way she must have died! _Why_ would he do this, _why_ would Krueger kill Trish?"

And he gave a sob and Harvey shifted closer to him on the sofa, he put his arms around him and then he held on tight until his sobs began to subside.

As Vic began to calm himself once more, Harvey shifted back a little, keeping a protective arm around him as he spoke quietly to him, revealing a truth long hidden from a time far distant that Harvey wished he could forget:

_"They came to speak to your Dad."_ He said in a low voice, _"They told him, the other parents of the Elm Street kids told him, they wanted to kill Krueger and they wanted him in on it. But your Dad got scared and said no way would he get involved with murder." _

Vic stared at him.

"How do you know all this?"

"Because I was upstairs, I was meant to be doing my homework but I heard them talking and I sneaked down the stairs and listened at the door._ It was Nancy's Mom and a couple of other parents. They said a group of 'em had got together and decided to get rid of Krueger because the cops had let him go. Your Dad wouldn't go along with killing anyone. So they called him chicken shit. That's what I heard about your Dad when the Elm Street vigilantes came to my father to ask him to join them! That's how I know your Dad wasn't involved."_

Vic's eyes got even wider.

"_Your_ Dad was one of the vigilantes?"

Harvey couldn't help but smile at that remark. He shook his head.

"Of course not, Vic! My Dad was the local church minister; of course he didn't join them!"

And then his smile faded as he recalled his father's words:

"_He warned them that if they killed Krueger they could be killing an innocent man. He reminded them that there was no real evidence to tie Krueger to any of the crimes. And he told them that if they committed murder, they'd pay for it – if not in this life, in the next."_

Vic drew in a slow breath.

"So why is Krueger after me? And why did he kill Trish?"

Harvey's face grew pale.

"_One of the people who came to speak to our parents about killing Krueger was Trish's Dad."_

And Vic looked back at his best friend, thinking about all the years he had known him, remembering how close they were and wondering how Harvey could have kept a secret like this for so long...

"How come you never told me any of this before?"

Harvey shrugged.

"Why dwell on the bad stuff? I don't see the point in doing that, it's the kind of stuff that can make you go crazy in the end if you think about it too much."

Vic nodded in agreement.

Then he thought again about the part that still made no sense to him.

"But why _me,_ Harvey? If my parents were nothing to do with his murder, why would he come after me?"

Fear reflected in his eyes as Harvey looked at Vic.

"I don't know." He said honestly, "I don't know why he wants you, Vic."

And then Harvey tightened his grip on his shoulder as he kept his arm around him and determined resolve deepened in his eyes.

"_But I won't let him get you, Vic- I promise you, I won't let Krueger get you..."_

* * *

Far away in his own personal hell of darkness and flame, Freddy's knives twitched as he stood in semi gloom while the fires of the boiler room glowed ghostly orange in the distance.

Nancy stood before him with rage burning in her eyes that seemed to match the same fierceness as the flames that covered the walls of his boiler room.

He knew that look was one of accusation and to be reminded of how it felt to be accused caused him pain he did not care to show:

_It took him back to the day so long ago when he had been wrongfully accused of being the Springwood killer. _

_The pain and rage at suffering such terrible false allegations, the pain of suffering because of a lie had cut down into his soul; the day they had arrested him for terrible crimes he did not commit had been the day Freddy had felt a part of himself die, a part that died long before the vigilantes had doused him gasoline and set him on fire._

_A piece of his soul had been ripped out that day and he often thought of that as the day he truly died as Fred Krueger the human being._

_It was a pain that he had carried beyond death along with the pain of his murder at the hands of vigilantes who believed they were ending the life of a guilty man._

_It was the kind of pain known only to those unfortunate enough to be damned to a hell so unique that the agony was indescribable; it was the pain of the innocent whose screams went unheard, the pain of those condemned by lies and false allegations..._

But the look in Nancy's eyes only reminded him of this for a moment and then it was gone – because he knew that she was about to accuse him of something he definitely _was_ guilty of - _the murder of Trish Fox_...

"I know you killed Vic's wife." She stated.

"She was the last of the children of the vigilantes." He told her, "She came back to Elm Street, and so I killed her. What's the big deal?"

And his lips twisted into a cruel smile as Nancy sensed her ties to the living world and felt Vic's pain.

"But why couldn't you leave her alone? You killed my friends, isn't that enough?"

Freddy spread out his glove and waved his razors through the air, catching wisps of smoke that had trailed down from the heat of the boiler room.

"There are many levels of hell, Nancy. And Trish belonged one of them anyway. She's not here. Not with me – she's in a dark place where she must answer for her crimes. She's the one who had your cousin shot! She wanted to kill him for his money."

Nancy stared at Freddy. She knew he wouldn't lie to her because she would sense lies- but he was good at keeping secrets and this was something she hadn't expected to hear at all...

"_Trish tried to kill Vic?"_

Freddy nodded.

"So I had little time to shred her properly before she was taken by other dark forces... but your cousin is another matter...I shall _enjoy _my time with him!"

Nancy's voice filed with alarm.

"_Leave Vic alone!"_

"Vic's next." He promised her.

Nancy fixed him with a hardened stare as if she could see straight through his dark soul.

"I won't let you do this! Vic has done _nothing_ to you!"

"_Yes he has." _Freddy murmured as he reached out with the hand not hidden by his glove as he toyed with a lock of Nancy's hair.

She pushed his hand away.

"_What's he done, Freddy? Tell me why you want him dead!"_

But Krueger remained silent, turning away as he walked back through darkness.

Nancy shouted his name but Freddy did not look back, he just kept walking towards the flames that flickered at the entrance to his own personal Hell, keeping silent, determined to keep his secret from Nancy as he entered the boiler room alone.

* * *

Vic was back at Harvey's place.

"Thanks for letting me stay here." He said to his friend as he shoved an overnight bag under the bed in the spare room and reached into his pocket, feeling instantly safer knowing his dream-killing sleepers were in there.

Vic was wrapped in a bathrobe now after taking a shower in Harvey's bathroom. After what had happened to Trish in his own bathroom, there was no way he wanted to go back in there- he didn't even want to go home again – but at last he was starting to feel safer, here at home with Harvey. He knew he wasn't totally safe but he had the sleepers and he had his best friend close by and that was the best he could hope for, given the situation...

Vic sat down on the edge of the bed and gave a weary sigh.

"Get some sleep." Harvey reminded him, "Remember, you're not alone with this any more."

And then he fell silent as Mel came in to the room.

"Are you feeling okay, Vic?" She asked kindly, "Harvey told me what happened- I'm so sorry to hear Trish walked out on you like that..."

_"I guess I'll learn to handle it."_ He said quietly. The story about Trish leaving him had been Harvey's idea – and it was the only one that convincingly explained her sudden disappearance...

"We're _both_ here for you." Mel reminded him.

Vic forced a smile.

"Thanks." He replied.

Then Mel placed a glass of water beside his bed.

"I hope you get some rest, you look like you need it."

And then she left the room.

Harvey looked at his exhausted friend.

"She's right –you _do_ need to sleep." He agreed.

Vic opened the pill bottle and took out a sleeper.

"I guess you're both right."

Vic swallowed the pill and got into bed.

Harvey stayed beside him, catching the nervous look in his eyes as he settled back against the pillows.

"You can't dream on that stuff." He reminded him, and as Vic closed his eyes he felt Harvey's hand gently brush his cheek.

"_Go to sleep, you're safe now."_ Harvey whispered softly.

And as the pill kicked in Vic gave a sigh.

He was aware that Harvey was still beside him because he could feel him stroking his hair, his touch was comforting and feeling safer now, Vic welcomed the medication that swiftly took control of his mind, sedating him rapidly into a safe and dreamless sleep.

* * *

_It was dark outside._

After Vic had fallen asleep Harvey had stayed beside him for a long time, watching over him ready to shake the hell out of him to wake him up if he looked like he was having some kind of bad dream.

But the meds had worked and Vic slept on and eventually Harvey had gone downstairs again to watch TV with Mel, then she had suggested bed and he had gone upstairs with her- but after the light went out he _still _wasn't ready to sleep because he couldn't switch off his thoughts after such a disturbing day, he was still in his jeans and T shirt and thoughts of even getting ready for bed had not entered his mind yet.

So Harvey sat on the bed next to his sleepy wife and picked up the remote control.

Mel complained when he switched on the small TV that was mounted onto the wall and started to zap through the channels.

"Can't you sleep?" Mel had murmured as she turned away from the glare of the screen.

"Sorry." Harvey told his wife, "I was just thinking about Vic..."

"He's fine, he's here with us. Go to sleep."

"I'll watch TV for another half hour, I'm just not tired, honey."

Mel blinked tired eyes.

"Well could you do it _downstairs_, honey? I'd like to go back to sleep!"

Harvey smiled and gave his wife a kiss, handing her the remote control at the same time.

"I'll come to bed soon." He promised her.

* * *

As he left the bedroom he paused outside Vic's room, opening the door to check on him.

He smiled as he watched Vic sleeping soundly, then he quietly closed the door and went back downstairs.

Moments later he was on the sofa with the TV on and he started to zap the channels, wondering what he would find, hoping for a late night surprise like maybe stumbling across an erotic movie...

He relaxed on the soft couch and smiled as he zapped another channel. His eyes were growing heavy and he was sure he closed them for just a second – then a strange sight brought him back to wakefulness once more:

_The screen had turned to static snow..._

Harvey sat up and blinked, hitting the _down_ button on the volume as white noise sounded like a swarm of bees as the hiss came through the sound system.

"What the hell?" He wondered, getting up from the chair and going over to the TV.

He knelt down on the rug in front of the TV and pressed the remote control several times but nothing happened.

Then he put the remote aside and manually hit the channel button.

_The channel flipped over._

_The static was gone. _

_The screen was dark and in the back ground flames flickered._

Harvey's eyes grew wider...there was a man walking up to the screen and as he came into focus, Harvey shivered:

He knew that hat and striped sweater, and as the man's burned face and evil smile leered at him from the TV screen he caught his breath...

_Freddy Krueger? There was a movie on TV about Freddy Krueger?_

He didn't want to watch it.

He didn't _like_ horror movies, especially not late at night, alone in the dark...and he _really_ didn't want to watch a movie about Freddy...

He pressed the manual channel button again, but the channel wouldn't switch.

Freddy raised his glove and tapped on the screen with one of his razors.

"_Hi Harvey."_ He said darkly, and the screen rippled like water and Freddy's hands plunged through it, grabbing him by the shoulders.

Harvey screamed and struggled as Kruger pulled him in, but his grip was strong and as blackness swallowed him up his cries were muffled and then silenced as he was pulled into the TV set.

Then the screen solidified, the TV switched off and the room was dark and still once more, leaving behind no clue to what had just happened:

_Harvey was gone..._


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

_The flames flickered._

Harvey coughed and turned over, feeling the heat as he blinked and slowly got used to the heat and gloom and the ribbons of fire that seemed to breathe from the walls of this place.

He coughed again and wondered in the house was on fire...

Then he blinked again and his surroundings came into clear focus:

He saw the metal pipes that ran along the walls, noticed the sheer size of this gloomy place that was lit purely by flame...

As he started to work it out he recalled the hands reaching through the TV set and dragging him in.

_No...This couldn't be real..._

Harvey's eyes grew wider and his heart began to race; this was no dream, he knew it for sure because it was too real:

This was the place he had heard about, the place of urban legend that he had always known deep down inside was _not _a myth.

He knew where he was – _this was Freddy Krueger's boiler room._

_This was the place where he took his victims._

And here he was, standing over him:

He was a tall, athletic man whose burned features were hidden by the brim of his hat, the flames that lit up the walls seemed to turn the stripes of red and green on his sweater so cash vividly, so sharply it almost hurt his eyes. _Firelight reflected off the blades attached to his glove; those blades looked sharp enough slice through flesh like a hot knife sliding through butter..._

Harvey was helpless with fear as Freddy Krueger reached down and grabbed hold of him.

As Kruger hauled him to his feet, Harvey screamed.

Then he was slammed hard up against the wall and held him there in an iron grasp.

As Harvey was pinned to the wall he started to tremble with fear - and seeing this made Freddy smile.

"I have you now!" He said darkly.

Harvey dragged in a breath.

"_Why...why me? What do you want me for?"_

Harvey's voice was filled with terror and it gave such strength to Freddy, it fed his power so sweetly making him feel as if it burnt within him as bright as the flames that lit the boiler room.

"_This is going to be fun."_ Freddy stated raising his glove and gaining deep satisfaction from the way Harvey's frightened gaze fixed with utter terror on the way the blades caught the light.

The Harvey's gaze shifted and he looked fearfully at Krueger:

_Freddy was real._

_He had him in his boiler room._

_He was going to kill him for sure... Or was he?_

Harvey knew his heart was racing, it was beating so wildly with terror he felt as if his ribs would snap and then his heart would come flying out and land bloody in Freddy's grip...

_What would Freddy do with his still beating heart? _

_Crush it in his grip while he sucked out the blood like nectar?_

No...Harvey forced his frightened mind to slam on the brakes, because his imagination was running away too fast to catch up with and pull back - and he had just heard Freddy say something that suggested perhaps he had _not_ been brought here to be killed after all... because Freddy had just said something about _fun..._

"_F...Fun?"_ He stammered, "Okay..._maybe_ I can handle that..."

And he took in a breath and looked into Freddy's eyes.

"As long as you promise _not_ to kill or hurt me, I want you to know that anything goes – _anything_ – as long as you let me go afterwards!"

And Freddy, feeling slightly confused, stared at Harvey for a brief moment - then as he spoke again, he understood.

"I won't even mind if you're rough." Harvey said hopefully, "As long as I can go home again, just let me go home after we've been _kinky _together, okay? And watch where you put those knives-"

Rage burned in Freddy's eyes as he slammed his blades into pipes close to Harvey, who yelled out in alarm as Freddy kept him pinned there while steam hissed out, scalding hot and dangerously close to him.

He kept his grip on Harvey tight as he pulled the blades free and glared into his eyes.

"If I wanted to have _a good time_ with you, I would have hacked you into a thousand pieces by now!"

And Harvey gave up the fight on seeing the depths of darkness in his eyes; _there was no way he was getting out of this place alive..._

As he gave a sob, Freddy spoke up again.

"I'm not interested in killing you." He informed him, "Vic's the one I'm _really_ after! I want him down here screaming while I tear him to shreds!"

Harvey gave another sob as he thought of his best friend.

"_NO! No, leave him alone! Please don't hurt him...I love that guy, please don't kill him..."_

And Freddy responded by placing the edge of a blade against his flesh; he smiled as Harvey screamed as he dragged the blade downwards, opening up his arm just enough to cut flesh to taste the blood below the surface. His skin broke and blood flowed onto the blade.

As he let go of him Harvey slid to the floor sobbing hysterically as he looked up to see Freddy lick his blood from the razor's tip.

"You won't have to wait long for Vic." He said coldly, "He's afraid of me but he won't leave you here...you're his bait, Harvey, that's _all _you are..."

And he laughed darkly, then turned and walked away from Harvey, who tried to get up but instead collapsed in a shaking, terrified heap as he curled up and sobbed on the floor of the boiler room.

* * *

"_Where's Harvey?"_

That was a question Vic had not expected to hear after waking from a restful, dreamless sleep and getting dressed and looking out the window at his own house across the street, recalling the terrible discoveries he had made there.

"Vic?"

Mel repeated the question.

"Where's Harvey? I got up this morning and he wasn't here. It's not like him to go out without mentioning something to me."

Vic shook his head; he guessed maybe he'd gone out to clear his head, it was a cold morning but perfect for a long walk to get some fresh air.

"I don't know, I've just got showered and dressed, Mel. Maybe he went into town."

"_His car is still here."_

"Maybe he went for a walk. He'll be back soon."

Mel nodded.

"I guess you're right. It's silly but I got the weirdest feeling when I woke up this morning – almost as if he hasn't been here all night."

And Vic frowned.

_He thought about Krueger and then pushed the idea aside because it was too scary to think about, the notion that Freddy could have got his best friend..._

But then he remembered what Harvey had told him about how his father had refused to help the vigilantes - and recalling that made the possibility that Kruger was involved seem so remote his fears melted away; _of course Harvey was okay; it had been a tough time, a scary time and no doubt Harvey had got up early and decided to get away for a couple of hours.._.

"I'm sure he's okay." Vic said, "Maybe he decided to go and get some more grocery shopping after all the food we got through at the party."

"_I already did that." _Mel still sounded worried."And it's not like him to just walk out," She added, "He _always _says goodbye."

Then she dismissed her concerns, feeling sure Vic was right and Harvey would soon be back.

"Do you feel like some breakfast?" She offered.

Vic shook his head.

"Not right now. I have to go home and sort a few things out, I'll be back later on, I'm sure Harvey will be back by then. Have you tried his cell phone?"

She nodded.

"He must have taken it with him, I can't find it any where... I called his number but it went straight to answer phone."

"I'll give him a call later on." Vic promised, and then he grabbed his jacket and put it on and picked up his house keys.

* * *

Vic's keys felt heavy and cold as death as he kept them in his hand all the way across the street and made his way down his own front path.

He glanced back at Harvey's place several times- Harvey was out but Mel was home and knowing _someone_ was in there made him feel safer, yet with every step he took closer to his own home, where he would be alone in the house where Freddie killed Trish, he struggled against a sense of rising panic.

_"This is crazy!"_ He muttered under his breath as he raised his shaking hand and shoved the key into the lock and turned it.

Vic went inside and closed the front door and took in a couple of deep breaths:

_Yes, this place definitely freaked him out._

_Krueger had got to Trish after the party, when she came home._

_He had waited until she had got sleepy in the bath tub, her eyes had closed and then –_

He took in another breath and swallowed hard, trying to mentally banish the image of how Krueger might have sliced her up before dragging her down the drain like that...

Then he thought again about Harvey.

_His absence was bothering him now._

_Maybe he was okay – but maybe not..._

Vic shook his head as he stood in the hallway thinking about it all – why would Krueger want Harvey? His Dad had refused to take a part in Krueger's death...

He felt sure he would feel better once he called Harvey. He hadn't wanted to worry Mel by asking for her phone to call him just be sure he was okay, his plan had been to use is own cell phone.

_But he had left his phone here, at home._

_It was plugged in and charging up, it was in the bedroom. _

_It was plugged into the socket right next to the bathroom door..._

Vic stood at the bottom of the stairs and slowly looked up.

Those stairs had never seemed harder to climb than they did right now.

He took in a shaky breath and tried to steady his nerves, but he couldn't stop his whole body from trembling as he looked up the stairs into the silence.

"_I don't want to go up there..."_ He whispered, _"Oh God, what if he gets me?"_

He knew he sounded crazy- he was wide awake and Krueger could only move freely in his dreams- but the thought that Krueger had killed Trish in the bathroom was enough to make him feel like he never wanted to enter this house again, let alone go upstairs, back to the bedroom, getting up close to that bathroom again...

_But he was worried now and he knew he would stay worried until he called Harvey._

_He had no chance of remembering his number and being able to call him from a pay phone because of the damage the shooting had caused, he needed that phone and it was upstairs and he had to go up there and fetch it and hit speed dial and call Harvey..._

Vic fixed his gaze on the top of the stairs and began to go up.

Halfway was easy.

Then he stopped, breaking out it a sweat as he heard a faint knocking sound. It was coming from up there, along the hallway...the bedroom?

_Every stair became harder to climb._

He gripped the rail and forced himself upwards, all the way to the top and then he looked back feeling breathless in a way that frightened him as he thought how far away the front door seemed now; Harvey was out and Mel was across the road, in the house and no one would hear him if...

_If what?_

_Freddy couldn't get him now; he was wide awake..._

Vic took in a slow, deep breath to steady himself once more and walked along the hallway, quickening his pace to get this over with as he reached the door to his bedroom and pushed it open.

* * *

The room was light and airy and gave no hint to the horror that had happened in the room beyond.

The tapping was louder now.

Vic's gaze shifted around the room, his stomach turned over like he wanted to throw up all over again as he worked out where the sound was coming from:

_Why did it have to be coming from the bathroom?_

He went over to the wall by the bathroom door and unplugged his phone charger and wrapped up the wire and put it in his jacket pocket. Then he checked his phone and saw there were no missed calls and put it in his other pocket and turned to leave.

And that tapping sounded again, beyond the bathroom door.

Vic stopped and turned back, giving a heavy sigh:

_Why was he doing this? _

He just didn't know if he was trying to prove he wasn't crazy, or if he simply needed to remind himself that he _did _actually have the balls required to go back into that room...

_He couldn't leave it alone._

He _had _to open that bathroom door...

Vic grabbed the handle and shoved the door open fast.

The bathroom was spotless and undisturbed; the only clue that something terrible had happened in here was the faint trace of household beach that still lingered in the air.

For a brief moment he was frozen to the spot as he stared at the empty bath tub ad recalled the nightmare given to him by Freddy, the nightmare where he had actually believed he had killed Trish with his bare hands... that thought had lingered, that feeling stayed with him..._had Krueger wanted him to feel this way, to know what it was like to take a person's life?_

What disturbed him the most was the fact that as he remembered holding her under the water, he also recalled the feeling of revenge and the satisfaction he had got from it knowing she was the one who had him shot..._Kruger had tried to turn him on to killing, he was sure of it..._

He looked up from the tub and saw the source of the tapping noise: the window was open and the breeze was making the small metal shade knock against the wall. The slats were up and bunched together and the knocking against the tiles had sounded loud, echoing in the hollowness of the bathroom.

Vic stepped up onto the edge of the bath and pulled the window shut.

He was sweating harder now because his back was turned on the whole of the room and he had just had a horrible thought that if he glanced around quickly he _might _catch a glimpse of something over his shoulder - exactly _what,_ he didn't know - but he had done it now, he had proved he could face the bathroom and now he just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Vic stepped down from the bath quickly, turned sharply towards the door and gave a gasp of horror as he caught sight of something dark reflected in the bathroom mirror.

As he panicked to rush for the door and the dark shape did the same he knew what he had actually seen was his own jacket reflected - but then the bath mat slipped as if he had just stepped on ice and he realized too late that Harvey, for all his good intentions, had placed the bath mat the wrong way up, the fluffy side was against the tiled floor now...

As he slipped he reached out to grab at the sink but missed, falling hard as he smacked his head against the porcelain.

_The blow knocked him out cold._

* * *

Vic woke up with an ache in his head and as he sat up he blinked away blurred vision and instantly recalled the accident.

He reached up and cautiously touched a bruise on the side of his head; a little blood came away on his finger tips but he guessed he would be okay because apart from a mild headache he felt able to stand up.

He grabbed at the side of the bath tub and leaned on it heavily as he got himself back on his feet, then he thought about the damage the bullet to his head had done on the night of the shooting and considered himself lucky the fall in the bathroom had not been more serious.

He walked out of the bathroom deciding it was best to go back over to Harvey's place before his own jittery nerves got the better of him and caused another accident.

_And then his cell phone began to ring._

He drew it from his jacket and breathed a sigh of relief:

_He had a video call from Harvey._

Vic raised he phone and turned a little so that Harvey would be able to see him clearly too, and he smiled as he hit the answer button.

"Harv?"

His smile had vanished.

All he could see where the caller's face ought to be was an empty, gloomy room with flickering shadows that looked like_...oh no... It couldn't be...flames? _

"Harvey?" He said nervously, "Quit fooling around! Let me see your face."

And Vic went weak with fear and tried to breathe in but it seemed as if the air had been sucked out of the room as the caller's face appeared on the video screen:

_It was Freddy Krueger. _

_He leaned in toward the screen and gave him a little wave with his glove of razors and then he smiled an evil smile._

"_I'm your boyfriend now, Vic!" He barked sharply, then he got up closer to the screen and ran his tongue up it._

Vic gave a cry of fear and dropped the phone on the bedroom carpet.

The call ended.

Vic could barely breathe:

_Krueger had Harvey?_

He barely had time to think about it was his phone beeped:

_He had a new text message..._

Vic reached down and grabbed his phone, half afraid of Freddy's face appearing on the screen again.

He accessed his message, it was from an unlisted number and the message read: _YOU WANT HARVEY? COME AND GET HIM, ASSHOLE!_

Vic gave a frightened sob as he thought of his best friend and then his thoughts turned to that terrifying boiler room where he was trapped with Freddy Krueger...

And then a voice came softly from the bathroom and Vic stared in horror through the open doorway.

"_I'm sorry, honey."_ Said Trish as she rested her arm on the edge of the bath and lay back in the soapy water, _"I regretted having you shot. I mean it, I made a mistake. But it's okay now, I got away from Freddy. I came back to help you..."_

Vic blinked back tears as he walked into the bathroom once more, this room holding o fear for him now as he looked into his wife's eyes.

"I love you, Vic." She said as she turned in the water and held her hands out to him, "Come here, help me get up..."

And Vic took hold of her hands and lifted her.

As he pulled her free from the tub he looked down, gave a gasp of shock as he let go of her:

Only _half_ of Trish was there. Her body was intact from the waist up, but below it there was nothing but bloody, slimy entrails and as her half body hit the floor her insides slapped against the tiles with a squelch and she smacked her palms against the cold floor, raising her head and glaring at him as her face twisted into the features of Krueger and her bare upper body became covered with a striped sweater.

She slithered fast towards him on her hands, from her throat came Krueger's menacing voice:

"_COME TO FREDDY!"_

Vic turned and ran, bolting from the bathroom, through the bedroom and out into the upper hall.

He dashed for the stairway not daring to look back until he reached it, then as he glanced over his shoulder the thing that had looked like Trish was still slithering as it left the bedroom, then it twisted and grew and Krueger was standing there instead, looking down the upper hall and flexing the knives on the end of his glove as he laughed darkly.

"_You're mine now, fucker!" _He stated, and began to stride down the hallway, heading for the stairway.

Vic tore down the stairs, thinking only of the front door, of ripping it open and getting the hell out of the house.

_Maybe Freddy would catch him, maybe not...he had a chance if he could reach the door..._

Vic ran to the bottom of the stairs and Freddy was close behind, he could heard him on the staircase, he was almost on him now – then he slammed into someone and fell back onto the hallway carpet, he looked up to see Freddy on the third stair from the bottom about to leap off with his blades extended.

"_NO!"_

Nancy's voice echoed around the hallway.

Freddy froze staring at her, his gaze fixed on the dusty, closed folder she held in her hand.

She raised the hand that held the papers and his eyes grew wider.

Vic was breathless as he pulled himself to his feet, feeling like a coward yet again as he stood behind Nancy, feeling safe to be behind the girl who had saved him once before from Krueger's knives.

"_Give it to me!"_ Freddy shouted in anger.

Nancy shook her head.

"_It's too late!"_

Freddy gave a roar of rage and frustration and vanished from the house, his cry echoing as he departed.

And Nancy turned to Vic, who gave a sob and as she held him, he wept in her arms.

* * *

_Vic didn't know how long Nancy stood there holding him._

But he sobbed and she said nothing, she stroked his hair and held him close until his sobbing had stopped and he was able to straighten up and gain control of himself, even though now gaining control meant he was shaking like a nervous wreck after what Freddy had just put him through.

As Vic let go of her and wiped his eyes he looked at her and blinked away the last of his tears.

"Thank you Nancy, oh shit, he was gonna carve me up!"

And Nancy saw the terror in his eyes and her heart ached for him as she wished she could do more to explain why, but she had no clue why Freddy was literally out for his blood.

"Why me?" Vic said tearfully, "_Why_ is he doing this to me, Nancy? I know about Trish, I know her father was one of the vigilantes. I get that – but what about me? I've _never_ done anything to anger Krueger! Why does he want me dead?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know." She replied, "He seems to have some kind of a grudge but I don't know why, he won't tell me. _But there is something we can do about it._"

And at last Vic felt a spark of hope.

"What do you mean?"

"Freddy wasn't the Springwood serial killer. The child killer was an escaped lunatic who died just after Freddy was arrested. But by then the cops had tried and failed to fit Freddy up for the murders. And when they let him go, the vigilantes who believed he was the killer burned him to death. He was an innocent man. _That's_ why he became the dream demon Vic, don't you see ? It's about anger, it's about revenge. He was innocent and if we can prove that, if the world finds out Freddy wasn't the Springwood killer all the hatred he's being fed will leave him. Without it the demon will starve and Freddy's soul can be released from his prison."

Vic stared at her.

_"Released? You want him freed?"_

Nancy nodded.

"But it's not as simple as it sounds. Freddy did no wrong until after his death. He avenged his own death by killing the kids of the vigilantes. That's what's damned him. But my friends have the power to choose his fate and if Freddy puts down his glove and lets the light into his soul they want to give him another chance – _on Earth_."

Vic's jaw dropped for a moment.

"_Are you crazy? Are your friends crazy too?"_

"I don't understand all the details." Nancy admitted, "But it's come to a point where wrongs have to be put right – and I need to get out of his personal Hell, I have to leave that place - and he can have a chance to come with me. It's been decided on a higher level. That's _all_ I know."

And she shoved the folder into his hands.

"There's not much time."

"I know that, he's got Harvey!"

"He won't kill him. He's holding him to lure you into his boiler room."

As she saw terror fill his eyes again Nancy tried to reassure him.

"I want you to take the evidence to the local press. It's important that Springwood finds out he's innocent before the rest of the world, it's the hatred of the people of Springwood that's turned him into the demon. When they know the truth the hatred will die. And then tonight I want you to go to sleep without your meds and meet me in the boiler room."

Vic's eyes grew wider.

"_The boiler room?_ He's going to _kill _me, Nancy! Me _and_ Harvey, we're both going to die!"

"No!" Nancy said firmly, "You don't understand – once people start to realize he was innocent he'll lose his power. Then the rest is up to him. But whatever happens I _promise _he won't hurt you, Vic – _I won't let him_."

And Vic looked back at her and recalled the stirrings of teenage love. He was sure those feelings still lived inside his heart for her, just like his love for Harvey dwelt there also. It seemed crazy that after all these years, and even at this moment, he _still _felt like an awkward, unsure teenager who was torn between love for his best friend and his cousin and unable to have a life with either of them...

Nancy looked pleadingly into his eyes.

"_Please trust me."_

"I _do_ trust you!"

"Then go – take the evidence and give it to the local paper. There's not much time..."

And with those words, Nancy faded from sight and so did everything else.

* * *

Vic woke with a gasp on the bathroom floor and he sat up sharply, glancing nervously to the empty bath tub.

He leaned on the bath and got up quickly, hurrying from the room and slamming the door behind him.

As he left the bedroom he looked down realizing he had something in his hands:

It was the papers that Nancy had handed him, evidence collected long ago and spirited away by Krueger when he wanted to prove his innocence only to Nancy...

Vic ran down the stairs and through the hall, wrenched open the door and left the house.

As the sunlight hit him his head ached and he reached up and wiped a trickle of blood from the painful cut to the side of his head.

He didn't know if he had concussion but after what he'd just been through he guessed it was normal to feel as if he wanted to throw up.

And then Vic got into his car and took off at speed, ignoring the sickness and the headache as he thought only of getting the papers to the press, just like Nancy had told him to do...

* * *

Harvey had screamed in terror as Krueger walked up to him in the boiler room and pulled him to his feet.

He had pushed him against the wall and Harvey had leaned against it blinking back tears as Krueger stood in front of him with fury burning in his eyes.

"Your friend will be dead by tonight!" He promised him, clashing the blades on his glove together as he anticipated slicing Vic's flesh.

Harvey looked back at Freddy and drew in a shaky breath, enough to find his voice once more.

"Why do you want to kill him, what's he ever done to you?"

Freddy glared back at him.

"It's what he'd _like_ to do!" Freddy said darkly, "I've seen inside his mind, into his heart...I'll rip it out of his chest, I'll eat it in front of him as he dies! _I'll_ _do it in front of Nancy too!_"

And suddenly Harvey understood everything as he recalled a day long ago, back in their teenage years when Vic had showed up at his house and talked to him – _about how crazy in love he was with his cousin Nancy..._

He stared at Krueger.

"That's what this about? Vic used to love Nancy so you want to kill him for it? She was his first love and she never even knew it and you want to murder him because of that? This is all about you saying, _Keep your hands off my girl?_"

And the rage in Freddy's eyes grew murderous as he grabbed Harvey and held him up against the wall, his knives poised to attack.

Harvey gave a weak cry of fear and quickly tried to calm the situation.

"Don't kill me...I...I...just mean, a guy like you... you've got _no_ reason to be insecure_... lots_ of girls would want you, Freddy! Not just the one you've imprisoned here_, lots_ of girls would want to be with a guy like you!"

Rage simmered down in his eyes as confusion replaced it.

"What do you mean?" Freddy asked cautiously.

Harvey took in another breath and spoke again, focussing on his words to mask his fear as he tried to sound convincing.

"Well, you're a ma –"

He paused briefly, deciding just in time _maniac_ was the truth and might not be the kind of compliment Krueger was fishing for right now, "You're a... _massively _notorious guy, and you're athletic and you've got powers to get into dreams... you're a _legend!_ All girls wanna go with a legend, you're Fred Krueger, they'll even like your burns...you're kind of _sexy _to some girls, in a scary sort of way...a legend, that's what you are! So you've got _no_ reason to hurt Vic. Nancy wouldn't choose him over you."

And Harvey forced a smile and hoped he was convincing enough to save both their lives as he tried to sound like he meant it as he put a sparkle in his eyes for the hideous dream demon that stood before him.

"To tell you the truth, Vic's more interested in _me_ than in Nancy. And he's not here right now so if you want to get closer to me that's fine because I kind of _like_ you..."

_And as Kruger looked at him thoughtfully, Harvey kept his gaze locked onto him, hoping he believed him and at the same time knowing it would turn out to be just his own bad luck if this hideous dream demon was actually Bi and willing to take him up on his offer..._

Freddy lowered his knives and let go of him, leaning closer to Harvey as he spoke in a low voice.

"I guess you're right about Vic."

And Harvey breathed a sigh of relief.

_But Freddy hadn't finished speaking._

"I won't rip out his heart and eat it." He stated, "I'll bring Vic to _you_..."

And his eyes darkened along with his voice as his gaze turned to one of pure malice.

"_And then I'll skin him alive and split his guts and rip out his heart and make YOU eat it instead!"_

Then Freddy turned and walked away.

And as he walked away Harvey slid to the floor in shock, where he began to sob like a frightened child all over again...


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Vic had got rid of the evidence quickly, taking the papers to the Springwood Gazette's offices in the middle of town and thrusting the folder into the hands of a woman who was entering the building.

As she collided with him, the slender, dark haired young woman had given a gasp as she stared at the guy who had just walked into her- he had a nasty bruise on his temple where blood was still drying; he looked as if he'd been in some kind of a fight...

Vic noticed she was carrying some paperwork of her own and he guessed if she worked here and was hoping for a career in journalism, she was just about to get herself a huge step up the ladder if she helped him out.

"_Take this to your editor." _He said to her, pushing the papers into her hand, _"It's the biggest story you'll ever uncover."_

She had looked back in him in surprise.

"Who are you?" She wondered.

And Vic had looked away from her as he replied, keen to stay anonymous, given the enormity of the story he had just leaked.

"I'm no one special." He said quietly,"Just get that story to your boss. _Krueger was innocent_."

Then Vic walked away quickly, heading for the busy streets of Springwood town.

He heard her call to him again, but he kept on walking until he turned the corner, then he got back into his car and drove away, heading straight for home.

As he drove he thought about the task that he faced come nightfall:

_He did not want to go into that boiler room._

But Freddy had Harvey and he also had Nancy and Vic knew this would never end unless he did exactly as Nancy had asked; tonight he would have to sleep without his meds and step into Freddy's world.

_If he didn't do it, he knew he would never see Harvey again._

He had no choice but to go a long with Nancy's plans – tonight, he _had_ to face the boiler room...

* * *

After he arrived home Vic parked his car in the garage and sat there for quite a while as he thought about the long, scary night that lay ahead.

Then he got out of the car and went into the house.

After the dream that Krueger had inflicted on him, going back into the house felt like the very last thing he wanted to do all over again.

_But this was it; the time had come to face his fears._

_There could be no more running or hiding from Freddy._

That thought stayed on his mind as he walked through the house.

This time he felt a little more in control, it seemed as if his fear was sliding back and giving way to firm resolve that tonight he would fight the demon.

_He would fight the demon and win, and he would get to live._

_Or he would lose and die and Harvey would die too..._

Vic went into the front room and opened up the drinks cabinet.

As he took out a half bottle of vodka he thought about Trish, about the way Krueger had tricked him into thinking he had killed her...

He hated to admit it to himself, but after finding out she had been responsible for his shooting, believing he had really murdered her with his bare hands in that bath tub had actually felt quite satisfying.

That was something he didn't want to dwell on, but _yes_, Krueger had _definitely_ turned him on to killing...

_But the nightmare ended now._

Vic rarely touched booze any more and he knew for sure that bottle would be enough to force him to sleep tonight without his pills.

_More than that, it would knock him out._

_He would sleep all night alone in the house undisturbed, with no one to wake him up. It would leave him trapped in Krueger's world where he would have to fight and win or lose and die._

Vic hesitated as he held the bottle in his hand:

_Once he started on the booze there was no chance of staying awake come nightfall, this would mean no turning back..._

Then he thought of Nancy. She had been his first love and she still didn't know how much he loved her. He had feelings for Harvey too, but even Harvey didn't really get how he felt when he looked into Nancy's eyes.

_And that girl was still alive, still as young and beautiful as she had been back in '84._

_She hadn't aged a day._

_She was still that girl he dreamed about..._

Vic unscrewed the top of the bottle.

Nancy didn't know how much he loved her. But maybe she would after he'd got her and Harvey out of that boiler room...

_Screw the bullshit about releasing Freddy. _

He was doing this for love, for the two people he loved, who meant everything to him...

_This was for Harvey._

_This was for Nancy._

Vic sat down on the sofa and took a swig from the bottle.

_Maybe he would survive this night, maybe not._

_But it was too late to turn back now._

* * *

As dusk began to settle over Springwood, Vic got up from the sofa feeling more than a little drunk as the room span briefly and his eyes began to feel heavy.

He heard a knock at the door and as he got up he briefly wondered if perhaps he had slipped into the dream world already and not realized- there was little difference between the world of dreaming and drunkenness and he wasn't sure- maybe he had crossed over already:

_Who was at the door?_

_Was it Krueger?_

He opened the door sharply, unsure of who or what lie on the other side.

Then he breathed a sigh of relief as he saw it was only Mel standing on the doorstep.

"Vic?" She looked worried as she started to speak, "I just got the late edition of the paper - they've run a special on Freddy Krueger."

And she opened up the paper and he read the headline:

_New Evidence Proves Krueger Innocent._

"It's on the TV as well." She said in a hushed voice, "Apparently Fred Krueger wasn't the Springwood killer. He was fitted up by the cops because they couldn't find the real murderer. And by the time they did find him..."

She drew in a sharp breath as she looked back at Vic with wide eyes.

"Oh God, Vic... Krueger was innocent. He was burned to death and he'd done nothing wrong...they killed an innocent man..."

And Vic leaned heavily on the door frame as the booze made his head swim.

"...And I wanted to ask you if you've heard from Harvey? He hasn't been in touch all day and I'm starting to get worried. I thought maybe he'd called and I'd missed it but I checked the phone and there's nothing, there's no word from him. Can you think of where he might have gone?"

Vic knew he was drunk and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it as he leaned heavily on the door frame looking at Harvey's wife.

"Don't worry about it." He stated, knowing he sounded more than a little drunk, "_I'll_ find him. I'll go to _hell_ and back for that guy, I _love_ him..."

And Mel blinked, looking at him in surprise.

"Have you been _drinking,_ Vic? I know Trish has walked out, but disappearing into a bottle won't solve anything!"

He looked back at Mel and her image blurred and doubled and he screwed his eyes shut and opened them again, swaying as he tried to stand up straight.

He wanted to tell her everything but he knew she wouldn't believe him:

_Mel would go nuts as soon as he said Trish was dead; she'd call the cops for sure..._

"I guess booze won't solve anything, but right now I just want to be on my own." He told her "And I need to crash out, it's _really_ important."

"No, you need some coffee!" She said, stepping closer, "Let me come in and help, Vic. I hate to see you like this."

"_Sorry Mel, I can't do that. Go home and wait for Harvey!" _He hadn't meant to snap at her, but it had sounded that way as he said it because he'd thought about how important it was that he fell asleep, and that he did it soon.

All hints of concern vanished from Mel's eyes.

"Okay, do it your way, Vic. When Harvey comes home I'll tell him to keep the hell _away_ until you've sobered up!"

"No, you don't understand-"

"_You're drunk, Vic."_ She stated, and then she turned away.

As she walked back towards the gate, he closed the door feeling relieved that he'd got rid of her – if Mel had come in and started pouring coffee into him he knew he wouldn't have fallen asleep any time soon - and then _nothing_ would go as planned...

Vic went back through to the front room and got comfortable on the couch.

He picked up the bottle and drank some more of the vodka, noticing the bottle was almost empty by now.

As soon as he settled back against the softness of the chair it eased his aching head and he gave a sigh as his eyes quickly grew heavy.

_He thought of Nancy and knew he had to find her._

Then the bottle slipped from his grip and fell with a soft thump onto the carpet as sleep claimed him.

Vic was gone now, crossed over once more into the dream world – and this time, he _wanted_ to be there- _he wanted to face the boiler room and Freddy Krueger because he wanted to get his friends out..._

* * *

Vic had crashed out on the booze with his thoughts fixed on finding Nancy and Harvey.

He had fallen asleep just as he'd felt like the room was about to start spinning again, but as he opened his eyes he knew he had crossed over into the dream world:

The late shades of Fall were gone; from where he sat on the sofa the view from the window showed green leaves on the trees and the sun was shining – here it was spring in Springwood...

Vic got up and saw the empty vodka bottle lying on the carpet, but as he walked down the hall and opened the front door he felt stone cold sober; the booze had done its job and knocked him out, putting his mortal body into a deep sleep that had left him free to enter the dreamtime.

He left the house and as he closed the door he looked down the path.

He saw her standing there in a white dress and framed by trees filled with blossom and as he looked at her he smiled, feeling like a teenager in love all over again.

Nancy stayed on the path and waited as Vic walked up to her.

"I was expecting to wake up and find myself in Hell." He told her, "Thanks for meeting me on the bright side instead."

And Nancy smiled and put her arms around him and hugged him.

As he held onto her he wished the embrace could last forever; he closed his eyes and pressed his face against the softness of her hair.

Then Nancy let go and looked into his eyes and Vic silently decided that here beneath the blossom would be the _perfect_ place to kiss his lost love for the first time.

But then Nancy spoke up and her words were filled with warmth.

"_I'm so glad you're here, Vic."_

He felt a glow that secretly filled his heart as he smiled back at her.

"I wouldn't let you down – you _or_ Harvey."

Nancy still had such a beautiful sparkle in her eyes as she looked at him.

"And thank you so much for taking the evidence to the press."

Vic was still smiling as he looked at his first love, but that smile soon vanished with the next words she said to him:

"_Thank you so much for helping Freddy."_

Vic felt his heart sink; It _had_ to be about Freddy...

_How could Nancy have feelings for Krueger?_

Even though it had been established that he hadn't been the Springwood killer, he had certainly become a demon after his death. The guy had killed Nancy's friends, too...yet Nancy didn't even try to hide her feelings for him.

The thought of Nancy and Freddy together made Vic's stomach turn over, but he didn't want to upset Nancy by letting her know exactly how much her ugly, murderous, evil dream demon lover sickened him, so he forced a smile.

"I just want to get Harvey and then get out of here." He reminded her.

Nancy opened the gate and stepped into the street and Vic followed.

"We have to wait for the others." She told him.

"So what's the plan?" Vic wondered looked up the empty street, "Are they going to grab him and rip off his glove and drag his ass back to the real world? What happens after that? Is Krueger going to be allowed to live his life, let loose amongst the rest of us?"

Nancy's expression changed as she jumped to his defense.

"It's _not _as simple as that! He has to _want_ to take off that glove. And he will do it as soon as he realizes he has no other choice! When the hatred leaves him, he won't be the dream demon any more."

Then Nancy looked deeply into Vic's eyes.

"It's_ not_ Freddy who made the demon! It was the hatred in the hearts and minds of the people of Springwood when they thought he was the murderer! _That's_ what turned him into a monster."

Vic didn't doubt that Nancy believed every single word she had just said, but as he recalled the murders of '84 and then thought about the death of his own wife, he very much doubted that evil could truly be lifted out of Krueger simply by giving him an overdose of sympathy and forgiveness...

_Then a car pulled up._

As the driver and the passengers got out, Vic felt an ache in his heart for three people who had died too soon and too young – yet they were stood there before him looking alive just like Nancy – and they were just as youthful, too.

Rod Lane smiled at Vic as he put his arm around Tina.

"Long time no see, Vic," He said, and then he laughed, adding: "You're looking good – _for your age!_"

Then Glen spoke up as he looked at Vic.

"Are you ready to do this?"

Vic nodded.

"Just get ready to grab Harvey." Glen told him, "Make sure you stay with us. We can all get out of there together. Don't worry about anything except taking care of Harvey, have you got that?"

"Sure, I've got it." Vic replied, keeping silent about the fact that he hoped their plans for Freddy would come to nothing:

_The son of a bitch was a demon and demons belonged in Hell..._

"Let's go." Nancy said.

And as she took hold of Vic's hand, any notion he had that she might have walked with him in the sunlight for a while longer vanished as the world turned dark and the fresh air was snatched away; now it was gloomy and the bright street was replaced by the closeness of the walls of a corridor.

At the end of the corridor lights flickered hellish shades of yellow and orange:

_They were walking toward the boiler room now..._

* * *

As they walked, Vic tried to keep up pace with Nancy but slowed down as the others over took him.

Nancy glanced back at him.

"Don't be scared, Vic, I won't let Freddy touch you."

"None of us will." Rod added, gesturing to Vic, "Stand beside us."

Glen shot Nancy's cousin a surprised glance.

"Come on Vic – where's your balls? We all have to face Krueger – why should _you_ be so afraid when we're all together like this?"

"Because Krueger hasn't killed him." Rod reminded him, "Vic's _mortal,_ Glen!"

"He hasn't killed me _yet_." Vic added quietly.

Rod patted his back.

"It's gonna be cool, Vic... _Nothing _will happen to you. I died young but you got to live and get older...and you won't be dying tonight. I'll watch your back."

"Thanks." Vic replied, looking into the eyes of his long dead friend and thinking at that moment just how much he still felt his loss in the real world, even though almost three decades had rolled by since his death.

And with that reminder of the strength of the bonds of friendship, Vic walked beside the others feeling stronger now, knowing they were firmly united as they got closer to the glowing flames and neared the entrance to Freddy Krueger's boiler room.

* * *

The closeness of the flames hit hard like a wall of solid heat as Vic followed the others inside.

For a moment it seemed it seemed as if the flames had devoured all oxygen and he struggled to breathe as panic flashed through his mind and he looked to Nancy's friends all dead, all unaffected by the intense heat. Even Nancy, trapped between worlds was also unaffected by it... _What had Rod called him, a mortal?_

Vic was very much aware of his mortality as he stood in the entrance to the boiler room; he felt as if he may as well have been stepping into the mouth of Hell or that he was about to drown, swallowed up by a lake of fire... It didn't matter that this place was Freddy's own personal Hell, to Vic it was all consuming and airless and he felt sure he was about to suffocate.

The Rod briefly touched his shoulder.

_"Chill out, Vic... just think about Harvey."_

And Vic breathed again and suddenly found he wasn't suffocating any more.

Nancy stepped forward.

She stood fearless in the middle of the boiler room and shouted to Krueger.

And the flames burned and the sound of burning was all that came back in reply as they all waited and watched.

"Where is he?" Glen demanded, looking around the burning room.

The place was vast, filled with shadowy places where nothing could be seen, all part shielded by flame.

"_Hey Krueger!"_ Rod yelled out, _"Show yourself!"_

Tina Gray looked grimly into the flame and shadow, recalling how that bastard had sliced her up.

"_Come out, you son of a bitch!"_ She snapped.

And then he emerged from a dark, shadowed corner, dragging something with him.

He seemed taller and even more menacing as he stood there framed by the fire light that lit up his burned features and that same light bounced off the sharpened blades at the end of his glove.

As he stepped out of the gloom and the dirty, quivering ball he was dragging was dumped in the middle of the boiler room, that shaking, dirty, frightened heap uncurled and Vic realized it was Harvey, who was filthy now from being dragged over the floor.

Harvey looked up at Krueger and screamed.

Vic stared in horror as he saw the wound to Harvey's arm – Freddy had already sliced him once, and by the way Harvey's terrified eyes were fixed on the sight of his blades it looked as if he was expecting him to do it again. Harvey looked as if he had gone beyond terror, the look he saw in his eyes went so far beyond it he wondered if his friend could ever come back from this nightmare and be the same person again...

And as Harvey screamed Krueger smiled a cruel smile and flexed his blades as he turned to him.

"_NO! Leave him alone!"_

As Vic forgot his fears and dashed forward, he regained his senses to late as Freddy reached out with his free hand and swatted him aside like a fly, sending him crashing against a wall. The blow knocked the breath from his body and as he rolled in agony on the floor with every bone in his body aching, Vic wondered if what he had just done had either been incredibly brave, or simply a stupid and futile gesture to try and save Harvey...

Then Freddy turned his back on Harvey and glared at the others, while his back was turned Vic rolled over and pulled himself upright, grabbing hold of Harvey at the same time.

As Vic got up he dragged his best friend to his feet.

Harvey was sobbing and shaking as he turned his head and looked tearfully at Vic.

"It's too late!" He sobbed, "He's going to kill us both!"

"_He's not killing anyone. It's over."_

As Glen spoke up, Freddy looked sharply at Nancy's former boyfriend.

"What can you do to me?" He sneered, "Nancy already tried to weaken me but look..." And he spread out his blades, _"I'm still Freddy!"_

Nancy stepped forward; she walked right up to him and looked into his eyes.

As Vic clung to Harvey he looked back at Nancy and felt afraid for her now:

She had stood there so unafraid to confront him but Krueger had murder in his eyes... but then Vic turned back to Harvey as he felt him give another sob.

"I'm getting you out of here."

Harvey looked back at him with wide, terrified eyes.

"_No, no...You can't run from Freddy...he'll get both of us!"_

Vic kept a tight grip on Harvey's arm.

"I came here to get you out, Harv. And that's what I'm going to do. Just stay on your feet and _don't_ fall apart on me! Can you do that?"

Harvey was trembling as he nodded and turned his face away, blocking out the sight of Krueger.

Vic put his arms around his best friend and the two of them stood together as the flames rose from the walls and he held him in his arms, he held him tight and kissed his cheek and then pulled back and looked into his eyes.

"_I'll get you out."_ He whispered, "No matter what, I'll get us _both_ out of here."

Harvey blinked and tears rolled down his face.

_"I...I want to go home..."_ He whimpered and grabbed hold of Vic's hand, gripping it tightly.

Vic's gaze had shifted back to Nancy and he felt truly afraid for her now, feeling sure he had never seen Krueger filed with such rage...

* * *

_Nancy was looking into Freddy's eyes._

He was looking back at her as if he wished he had killed her long ago instead of letting it come to this, to a time when she would stand up against him. She had been the only one who had ever reached out to him, the only one who had forged a bond with him after the hatred and the battles and the fight between good and evil.

_He had been so sure that evil would always win and now as he planned to kill her, he felt sure now that evil had indeed emerged triumphant..._

"_I trusted you!"_ He raged.

But Nancy didn't flinch as he leaned in closer and his eyes burned with fury.

"_It's over, Freddy!"_ She yelled, "Your power is gone! The whole of Springwood know the truth, the hatred that fed you _doesn't_ exist any more! _So if you want to kill me just do it, do it now!_"

And Freddy faltered:

_Nancy was telling him to kill her?_

She spoke again and her voice dropped to a whisper.

"All the hurt that turned you into the demon is gone, let _go_ of the glove! _Either let go of it or kill me with it!_"

And Vic stared at them, Freddy and Nancy in the middle of the boiler room, looking into each others eyes as strength burned in hers and hatred reflected in his. So much had gone unsaid and he knew in that moment that on some level, Krueger had loved her and she had loved him.

The thought of it sickened him but it _was _there, it was there plainly stated in the way that a silence between two people could state much more than a thousand words could ever convey.

"_Put down the glove and come with us or kill me now."_ Nancy said again as her determined gaze remained locked on him.

As Freddy looked back at her he thought about how she had leaked the truth to the people of Springwood, sharing a truth he wanted to keep buried:

_ His innocence was something that burned at the core of his soul, it screamed for release but the hatred that had fed the demon had covered it so deeply that he would feel skinned alive if the layers of the demon that covered him were stripped bare to set him free. Such things as freedom and release and life and peace and forgiveness were all thoughts he had long since shoved aside, preferring to embrace the darkness where pain and screaming and hopelessness and everything else that comprised his personal Hell were the only things that made any kind of sense any more..._

_He wasn't the human Fred Krueger; that man had died long ago, killed by a hateful mob who had believed a lie._

To think that he could be that man again filled him with terror, it was the letting go of the darkness that had become a part of him, that was the only thought that had the power to make him afraid - and Freddy Krueger _never_ wanted to taste fear again; he was the bringer of fear, he was the dream demon...

He would go to any lengths to _stay _as the dream demon.

He would do whatever it took no matter the cost:

_Even if that meant killing Nancy..._

"I always knew I'd kill you some day." Freddy said darkly, drawing back his blades.

"_No!"_ Tina yelled in alarm, making a move to go to her friend, but Rod grabbed her arm.

"Stay back - she _knows_ what she's doing!"

"And assuming this works," Glen said in a low voice, "What then? What do we do with Krueger?"

"We do as we planned, we've made our choice." Rod murmured, _"And so will he..."_

Then they looked up sharply together as Freddy grabbed Nancy by the throat.

"_You tried to destroy my power?_" He snarled, "Consider us _over,_ bitch!"

And Nancy gasped as Freddy plunged his blades downwards, her eyes widened and her body went rigid.

As Vic watched the terrible scene unfold he felt his heart breaking for his first love.

"_Nancy!"_ He shouted, but Nancy was still trapped as Krueger held her as hatred burned in his eyes.

_Then Nancy drew in a breath_.

Then she drew in another and victory shone in her eyes as Krueger looked down at her in confusion; _his blades had folded over against her body, weak and useless as paper..._

Nancy smiled:

This was victory...

"_It's gone, Freddy." _She said to him,_ "Take off the glove, let go of the demon, if you do it you can come with us."_

And Freddy stared at the others.

Vic was embracing Harvey who had his face buried against his shoulder but Nancy's friends were standing firm and had not an ounce of fear inside them now. The lack of fear was draining him now; it was draining away the last of his strength...

As Freddy let go of Nancy he fell to his knees, letting out a roar as the glove slipped from his hand and flames that licked out from the walls began to devour it.

Freddy was still on his knees as the rage and hatred burning in the eyes of the dream demon gave way to confusion and fear as he felt his dark power draining away as sure as a mortal would have weakened had an artery been severed.

Krueger's form shimmered darkly as deep shadow lifted from his body, it whirled around him as he screamed and as it lifted out of him the past blurred with the present and his soul threw out images that had dwelt within like a memory imprinted; the grey mass took on the shape of a burning man who screamed whilst a baying mob stood back and watched him burn. The past echoed loudly as the man screamed and screamed as his features melted.

Then the image was gone and Krueger's body twisted as he roared in agony.

Rod grabbed Vic's hand and held on tight.

"Stay right where you are and _don't_ let go of Harvey." He told him.

Vic glanced at Harvey and saw deepest fear in his eyes.

"I _won't_ let go of you." He promised him, tightening his grip on his hand.

Vic kept that tight grip on Harvey, whose other hand was held by Tina, who had linked with Glen. As Glen joined hands with Nancy and she grabbed Rod's free hand, the circle was finally complete around Freddy Krueger.

As they stayed in that circle the dark mist that covered Krueger was lifting, turning from black to grey to white as it swirled around him, blurring his form.

The mist that spun created a mighty wind what extinguished the flames of the boiler room as if snuffing out a candle and the boiler room grew dark and cold and began to fade out of existence, Vic could feel Harvey's hand shaking violently in his grip and he knew he was holding on to him so tight he was crushing him in his grip, but he remembered Rod's words and did not let go of Harvey, even though it felt as if all about them the world was lifting as Freddy Krueger's own personal Hell was being slowly demolished, taken apart and melted away into the ether.

_And Vic closed his eyes and said a silent prayer for this dark place and this swirling storm to be gone, for all of this to be gone so he could take Harvey and get out of here, so they could both get out of what was left of Freddy's Hell and find a way back to the real world once more..._


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

_It seemed as if the whirling storm would never stop. _

Vic kept his eyes closed and he knew he was still clinging on to Harvey's hand and as he listened he could hear vague whispers as the wind snatched his words and carried them off:

Harvey was praying, he was praying aloud for the Lord to save them from this terrible place, to lift them out of the darkness and restore them back to the light once more.

_Harvey was also crying._

Vic concentrated on the feel of his hand as he gripped it, knowing as sure as he wasn't about to let go now, he wouldn't let go of Harvey once they got out of this mess, either – he would stay close, he would make sure he was okay...

Even though going back to that house would forever give him the shivers when he thought about how Trish had died in that bathroom, he would _never_ move away from Elm Street because he did _not_ want to be far from Harvey. _He wanted to stay close to him forever..._

Then the wind dropped and silence surrounded them.

Vic's eyes were still closed as he kept hold of Harvey's hand.

Suddenly he could feel the whisper of a cool breeze on his face.

Then he heard faint sobbing and as Harvey's hand shook in his grip he knew he was still weeping.

"It's okay." He whispered, "We'll be okay..."

And he felt sure they were safe now, but he was too scared to open his eyes.

_"You can look now."_ Said Rod Lane.

And Vic opened his eyes, blinking as he got used to his new surroundings:

They were back at his house; they were all in the garage...

"_Where's my car?"_

As he spoke up he guessed after all they had been through, wondering why his car was not in the garage where he left it seemed to hardly matter.

"It's outside." Glen replied, "Don't worry about your car, Vic."

And as Harvey opened his eyes he looked around and took in a sharp breath, letting go of Vic's hand.

"We ...we made it?"

Vic nodded and Harvey gave a huge sigh of relief.

Then they both turned, seeing the others were looking at a man who stood in the corner of the garage apart from the group.

Vic stared, recalling the picture he had seen in the newspaper when Mel had showed him the headline about Krueger:

He was standing there in a pale shirt and light blue jeans. He had light brown wavy hair and as he looked at them all, fear reflected in his blue eyes. There was a hint of coldness there too, but in a way that said this man had lived through the kind of hell that would dwell in his soul for ever more:

_Here stood Fred Krueger, the man not the demon, mortal and very much alive once more, unmarked by the flames that had taken him in the past._

Vic's jaw dropped..._they'd given him back his life?_

He got to live again, as easy as that after all he had done?

"_Nancy."_

As Krueger spoke tears blurred his eyes.

And Nancy ran across the garage to him, holding out her arms.

"_No!"_ Freddy said in alarm, _"You can't come any closer."_

And confusion clouded Nancy's eyes as she stopped abruptly, she looked at him and wondered why Freddy was pushing her away; the demon was gone, his life had been given back to him...why did he seem so afraid?

"Just let me hold you." She said softy.

Freddy shook his head and looked over at the others, who were stepping forward together now.

"We agreed to give Krueger his life back." Glen said to Nancy, "We all agreed if he put down the glove he could live on Earth once more."

"_But there's a price."_

Nancy looked sharply at Tina.

"What do you mean?"

"Krueger murdered us when he became the dream demon." She told her, "_He has to pay for his sins and he's going to pay for them here on Earth._ In the next world he will know peace and joy and everything else you want to share with him but here, where he could still be a threat, here he _has_ to be controlled and he has to pay the price for his wrongs. _That's the deal._ He knew that while we were all in the vortex. He could have chosen to slide away with his world but he remained, he stayed because of _you -_ and he _knows_ what this will cost him."

"_Cost him?"_ Nancy echoed, "What are you going to do to him?"

As her friends saw the fear in her eyes, Tina stepped forward and put her arm around her, as she led her away from Freddy she looked back at him but Freddy looked away, he looked down at the ground and said nothing.

Rod turned to Vic.

"You'll be around for Nancy when you wake up, right, Vic?"

And he nodded slowly, getting an uneasy feeling about what exactly was going on here.

"Promise me?"

Rod was looking into his eyes.

"Sure, I promise...of course I will..."

Harvey was staring at Rod.

"What's going on?"

"_The final piece of the deal."_ Glen stated.

And Nancy realized Tina's grip on her arms had just got tighter.

She struggled but Tina held her firmly.

"He has to pay and he's going to pay right now." She told her, "It was left to us. We as his victims were allowed to decide. _This is the only way it can be_."

And Nancy looked at Freddy again and noticed something she had missed before:

_Freddy was standing in a pool of gasoline._

Vic had noticed it too and he stared in horror at the others.

"You can't burn him alive all over again!"

He stepped forward but Rod grabbed him, pushing him up against the wall. He locked onto him with a hard stare and Vic heard a _click_ and suddenly Rod's knife was a fraction from his face.

"_Keep out of it, Vic."_ He said in a low voice, _"This is something that has to be done. This is the price Krueger has to pay."_

And Nancy gave a sob as Tina held her back. She looked to Freddy, human Freddy whose demon was now gone and he looked back at her and she saw tears blurring his eyes.

Then the pool of gasoline ignited and chased up his body, the flames covering him, turning him into a human torch as he thrashed about and rolled on the floor and started to scream.

Nancy tried to break free from Tina's grip but Glen shot her a warning glance.

"_Not yet."_

Freddy was still rolling on the floor, his clothes and hair were on fire, his face was burned and he was screaming in agony and Vic looked away, knowing it only seemed right that Krueger paid for his actions as the demon, but like this? No, he hadn't expected this kind of a deal, retribution on Earth in such a way that the rest of his mortal life would be spent in pain...

_"Let her go now."_ Glen said quietly.

As Freddy rolled again and the last of the flames went out, Rod put his knife away.

"Sorry about that Vic." He said, "But I couldn't let you get involved."

And Nancy ran to Freddy and fell to her knees sobbing.

Freddy wasn't burned to death, but he was burned badly and that was the price he had agreed to pay to live again on the earth..._all to be with Nancy..._

"It's done now." Glen told her, "The demon's gone and he's paid for his sins. He _chose_ this."

And then he walked out of the garage.

Tina and Rod followed.

Rod glanced back at Vic who stood next to an equally shocked Harvey; they were both staring down at the sight of Nancy sobbing beside Freddy.

"See you, Vic." Said Rod in a hushed voice, and then he stepped out of the garage too and the three of them vanished.

* * *

"Help me." Nancy said tearfully, "Please help me, Vic...Wake up and call an ambulance!"

Vic blinked.

"We're still _dreaming?_"

Nancy shook her head.

"Not me or Freddy. _But you and Harvey are_."

"I was drunk." Vic stated, knowing there was no chance of him waking up unless someone shook him awake.

"I'll wake you both up." Nancy said.

She took one last look at Freddy and then ran from the garage and into the house.

Vic knew nothing after Nancy left the garage until he felt her shaking him.

He snapped his eyes open and sat up as his head ached and he wasn't sure if it was caused by the hangover or the bruise from his earlier accident, but he definitely felt hungover, too...

And Nancy was standing in front of him.

_Nancy his teenage cousin and she hadn't aged a single day._

_Here she was; it was real, it was all real..._

He started to smile as he looked at her.

Then he thought of Harvey and sharply looked over at the other couch:

Harvey was sleeping deeply, his clothes were no longer dirty but he had a gash on his arm that was starting to heal, the blood was drying and he turned over, giving a whine as if having a bad dream.

"No!" Vic said as she leaned over him, "Don't wake him up...he's been though enough. I'll wake up him in a minute."

And then Vic remembered Freddy, not the monster, the man – on his floor in the garage and covered with burns.

"I'll call 911." Vic said, reaching for the phone.

Nancy grabbed a throw from the back of a chair and ran back out to the garage to cover Freddy until help arrived.

* * *

Vic felt numb as he called an ambulance.

It was still revolving around in his mind a bit like the way he had witnessed the demon leave the mortal Freddy Krueger; the thoughts moved darkly, disturbing him in a way that made him feel like life as he used to know it to be was gone forever now:

_Fred Krueger was alive._

_The demon was gone but the man was back here on earth._

_Back here with Nancy..._

Vic thought of Krueger and Nancy together and felt like throwing up all over again.

As he ended the call to the emergency services, he shook his head, guessing everything he had been through had sent him a little insane – it had taken all of his willpower not to say at the end of the call, _Please take your time, don't rush - I really want this man to die..._

And then he thought about the severity of Freddy's burns: Not as bad as the burns he used to have as the dream demon, but al the same, he was burned badly. _Perhaps_ badly enough to die.

He guessed as this had been planned Freddy would survive, he would survive badly scarred and in pain and crippled and he would never be able to hurt anyone again.

_But he would still get to live his life with Nancy._

_She would take care of him, spend all her time with him..._

Vic felt another wave of nausea and he shoved aside thoughts of Krueger.

He sat down on the sofa and gave Harvey a gentle shake.

Harvey woke up with a jolt and blinked terrified eyes.

"_Don't let him get me..."_

As he tried to sit up, Vic placed his hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him back down again.

He guessed he'd been right about who much everything had disturbed him; what he had been through had really freaked Harvey out - the poor guy looked half out of his mind with the shock of it all...

"_Vic..."_ Harvey gave a sob_,"Don't let him kill us!"_

And Vic reached out and gently ran his hand over Harvey's hair.

"Shh." He said, "It's okay..."

And he leaned over Harvey and gently kissed him.

As he pulled back again Harvey looked at him in surprise.

"You kissed me."

"_I know."_

Harvey thought about everything that had happened and his eyes grew wide with fear again.

"We shouldn't be waiting around here...he's coming to _get_ us!"

And Vic, who had made his mind up how to handle Harvey, looked at him blankly.

"Who's coming to get us, Harv?"

Harvey looked at him like his best friend had gone crazy.

"_Freddy Krueger! He grabbed me and dragged me off to hell and you had to come and get me...and Nancy was there, and her friends, her friends who died when we were teenagers..."_

Vic wanted to hug him and not let go and sob and cry and tell him he was right about everything – but Harvey couldn't handle the truth and right now he was confused and upset and this was the only time he had a chance to persuade his not too bright friend that he'd just had a terrible dream.

"_You had a nightmare."_

Harvey looked up at him in confusion.

"But I remember..."

"It was a bad dream." Vic said quietly, "Trish left me because –"

_"Freddy killed her!"_ Harvey's voice was bordering on hysteria again.

"No, no..._Shh._ Forget about Krueger, he doesn't exist! Trish left me and I spent the night at your place. In the morning you got up early and came over here to straighten the place up for me because she'd left it in a bit of a mess. And when I came home you and me started drinking. You didn't want Mel to know so you crashed out here."

Harvey frowned.

"But I feel so scared, it was so real..."

Vic took his sleepers from his pocket and handed him a pill.

"Just take that and get some more sleep, you'll feel great when you wake up."

And he left the room, dashing to the kitchen to get some water.

As he glanced out the window he saw the ambulance pulling up outside the house.

Vic went straight back to Harvey and gave him the water.

"Just sleep for a while, I promise you'll feel better soon."

And he watched as Harvey took the sleeping pill.

Then Harvey saw the flashing lights outside the house.

"What's going on?"

"_Nancy's boyfriend had an accident."_ He stated.

As Harvey looked back at him with a shocked expression, Vic felt instantly guilty. He knew the sleeper would dope him up enough to cloud his mind and help him accept the lie, but the lie was about to get deeper...

"My..." Vic paused briefly and thought about it: Nancy hadn't aged in almost three decades. Yes, he _did_ look old enough to be her father...

"_Nancy's my daughter."_ He said, "You told me when you met her how much she reminded you of my cousin Nancy Thompson. My daughter's the reason Trish left. I never told her about her and when she found out she left me."

"You had an affair?" Harvey wondered as his eyes grew heavy, _"Another one?"_

"Trish couldn't have kids. When she found out I had an eighteen year old daughter I'd never told her about, she left me. And Nancy's come to stay with me for a while. _She's got a boyfriend, his name is Freddy_..."

The drug was taking over Harvey's mind as his eyes closed.

"So _that's _why I had such a crazy dream..."

And he gave a sigh as the sleeper stared to kick in.

Vic watched him sleeping for a moment, then he stroked his hair and guessed that lying to Harvey had to be better than allowing him to now the truth, because the truth would send him insane...

Then he left the room, closing the door quietly behind him and he went to find Nancy.

By the time he reached the door that led to the garage he could hear her sobbing inconsolably.

* * *

The ambulance had left for the hospital by the time Vic got into the car.

Nancy was sitting in the passenger seat looking frantic with worry and he didn't want to tell her that he'd been so long getting ready to leave because he'd needed to pause to go in the bathroom and throw up violently.

"Hurry up, I need to be there with him!" Nancy said tearfully.

Vic started the engine and pulled away from the house and onto the road.

As they drove all he heard was Nancy's tearful voice as she worried about Freddy, as she said over and over that she didn't think this would have happened, that her friends would have done a thing like this...

Eventually, fighting another wave of nausea, Vic had turned to her and spoken his mind:

"He killed your friends, Nancy! They were given the choice to handle his fate. I don't blame them at all! He needed to pay for his crimes, he's paying. They needed to be sure he wouldn't be a threat to anyone – he won't be now. It makes sense to me."

Nancy ran her fingers through her hair and blinked away tears.

"But they said he _knew!_ He knew this would happen and he went along with it, he let himself get burned all over again, he went through that agony and suffering for _me?_"

And on hearing that, Vic felt sure that if she didn't shut up pretty soon, he'd have to pull over to the roadside to puke his guts up again.

"_I guess he loves you."_ He said through gritted teeth as he carried on driving, looking at the road ahead and wishing he had never fallen so hard for his cousin back when he was in his teens, because that was the _only_ reason he was here and still in this situation now – _because of Nancy_...

As he drove on and Nancy fell silent, lost in her thoughts of Freddy, Vic thought about his own situation, recalling the promise he had made to his dead friend:

_He had promised Rod he would take care of Nancy._

But that was _before _he knew Krueger was a part of the deal...

_Nancy was a young woman in her late teens and she had left this world in 1984._

_It was now 2012 and everyone who knew her, everyone who remembered her, believed her to be long dead._

_Even if she openly claimed to be Nancy Thompson they'd all look at her in disbelief because they wouldn't understand that she had been frozen ageless in time for almost thirty years._

_She had been gone too long._

Her parents were dead; she had no one and nothing, not even her own identity any more.

All she had was Freddy and he was only with her now because he'd accepted his side of the bargain to pay for his crimes here on earth, to suffer the agony of his burning all over again.

Freddy would never make much of a recovery from his injuries. Nancy would have to look after him; more than that, she would _want_ to, because she loved him...

Vic looked at Nancy.

Worry was clouding up her eyes along with more tears as she thought of Freddy and the flames that had covered him.

"Don't worry about Harvey. He thinks he's had the freakiest dream of his life. I gave him a sedative, by the time he wakes up he'll remember what I told him and he'll think about everything and then he'll believe the sanest version of events he can remember, because he's like that. I told him you're my daughter called Nancy and it's a pure coincidence you look like Nancy Thompson."

And she turned and stared at him.

"You did that for me?"

_Vic gripped the wheel harder and tried to push aside the urge snap at her, because he wanted to remind her he certainly hadn't done it for Freddy fucking Krueger..._

"Of course I did it for you! I want to help you, I can't leave you all alone in this great big world - you're in 2012, not 1984! You've got no one except me and you need someone to watch out for you. I'll do that for you, Nancy."

And despite her concern for Freddy, she managed a smile.

"Oh Vic, you're so kind!" She said gratefully, "Thank you so much!"

Vic briefly smiled too as he turned his attention back to the road.

"There's no need to thank me Nancy – I thought you'd always known I'd do anything for you."

Nancy glanced at Vic in surprise.

"_I never knew you cared so much."_

And he felt an ache in his heart; coming back to Elm Street had, for the briefest time, made him feel young again when he and Harvey had reunited and memories had come back to him.

But he never knew he would wind up as close to the past as _this_ – being in the same situation he was stuck in almost three decades before, torn between his best friend Harvey and his cousin Nancy.

It felt as if it was happening all over again and the second time around the situation was still the same - he couldn't have either of them; while it was true that Harvey wouldn't turn him down for a kiss or maybe more it was also true that Harvey loved his wife and would never leave her. And as for Nancy...Nancy didn't know he loved her, and how could he tell her now?

Then she reached over and her fingers brushed against his arm.

"Thank you." She said warmly, "I don't know what I'd do without you, Vic."

And Vic said nothing in reply, driving onwards, taking Nancy to the hospital because it was where she needed to be, with Freddy.

It would _always_ be about Freddy, Vic knew that – _and it was knowing that fact that made him half afraid of the whole situation driving him insane..._

As Nancy became lost in her own thoughts, Vic stayed silent for the rest of the journey.

* * *

It was late afternoon when Harvey woke up alone and feeling groggy.

He sat up sharply as memories swirled about in his mind; he recalled the crazy dream about being kidnapped by Freddy Krueger and then he remembered Krueger had killed Vic's wife, too...

Or was that part of the dream?

It _had_ to be a nightmare; he thought about how unlikely, how impossible it seemed that Krueger could be real.

He was a long dead person who kids made up rhymes about, he'd dreamed about a boogeyman...

Then he recalled what Vic had told him...he had a daughter called Nancy, who looked like his dead cousin Nancy Thompson? And Nancy had a boyfriend called _Freddy?_

Then he remembered Vic said they'd been drinking together before he had the bad dream.

He looked down at the floor and saw the empty half bottle of vodka and picked it up from the carpet, looking at the label in surprise:

It was a decent brand, and only a half bottle...this was _all _they'd shared and he'd had a dream as bad as that?

"_I need to stop drinking!"_ Harvey said aloud, then he left the bottle on the table and rubbed his tired eyes before leaving Vic's place and heading over the street to his own house.

He had barely let himself in with his key when Mel rushed out into the hallway and grabbed hold of him.

"Sorry..." Harvey said as he blinked tired eyes, "I didn't mean to sneak off like that...me and Vic got together and had a few drinks and..."

He stopped, wondering why she was staring at him arm.

He looked down, noticed his t-shirt was bloodstained and then saw the gash that was starting to heal.

"What did you do?" Mel said in alarm.

Harvey shrugged.

"I guess I must have fallen over, Vic said I was so drunk I just crashed out... I can't remember how I did it."

He braced himself for Mel to start yelling at him because it had been years since he had gone off and got drunk like that, but instead she blinked away tears.

"I'm so glad you're okay. You've just woken up? You don't know what happened over at Vic's place?"

Harvey frowned as he thought about hazy, sleep-blurred memories clashing with scary images from a nightmare so vivid it had seemed real and then he recalled Vic waking him up and then seeing flashing lights outside.

"Yeah..._something_ happened somewhere...I was still sleeping it off...what did I miss?"

Her eyes grew wider.

"Vic didn't tell you before he left for the hospital?"

"I don't know what you're talking about..."

"I went over there when I saw the ambulance arrive." She said in a hushed voice, "Vic was trying to comfort this young woman – he said she was his daughter, have you met her yet?"

Harvey thought about what Vic told him.

"He said she's called Nancy - looks a lot like his cousin, too. Weird coincidence..."

"_Did you meet Freddy?"_

At the mention of his name, Harvey gave a shiver, thinking of the dream demon.

Then he guessed she meant Nancy's boyfriend; Vic had mentioned him but he didn't recall meeting him...

"No I haven't, why?"

Her face grew pale.

"There was some kind of accident in the garage. _Freddy got terrible burns_."

Harvey's eyes grew wider as he felt a flicker of panic.

"Is Vic okay?"

"Vic was fine, he looked very shaken up but he wasn't hurt, he was with his daughter. They got in the car and left for the hospital."

Harvey turned around to head out the door and he turned so sharply the room span briefly.

"I'd better get over there, Vic might need me –"

"_No."_ Mel caught his arm and he turned back to her.

"Don't, Harvey." She said quietly, "You didn't see how bad that guy looked when they brought him out of there. I don't think Nancy's boyfriend's going to make it. Right now Vic needs to be with his daughter."

Harvey gave a sigh, but reluctantly agreed.

"I guess you're right." He said, "I'll wait here until he gets back..."

Then Mel's eyes filled with tears and she gave him a hug.

"I'm so glad you're home." She said softly, holding Harvey in her arms.

And he clung to his wife but his thoughts stayed with Vic as he hoped everything would turn out okay for his daughter Nancy and her boyfriend, who had been in such a terrible accident...

* * *

Vic had sat in the hospital waiting area with Nancy for a long, long time.

He had put his arm around her, comforted her and done everything he could to make her feel better and all the while his stomach was turning over to think she was weeping for Krueger.

"He's not a bad man." Nancy whispered as she wiped a tear from her face, "It was hate that turned him into a monster!"

And Vic briefly nodded and pretended to agree, purely because he hated to see her cry, while deep down inside all he wanted to do was yell, _But he killed your friends! _

But Vic held that back.

_He loved Nancy_.

He understood how deep love could go, under the skin into the heart and touching the soul...but Nancy loved _Freddy Krueger..._

That was something he was sure he could _never _get used to...

He felt shocked at the lengths he had already gone to in order to help Nancy:

_He had lied to Harvey._

_Then as he'd waited for Freddy to be moved from the garage, he'd seen Mel come over – and he'd lied to her too._

When they'd got to the hospital, he had carried on the lie, saying Nancy was his daughter and Freddy was her partner and yes, they lived with him.

He had even agreed to pay Freddy's medical bills.

When he was asked how the accident had happened Vic had broken out in a sweat and looked nervously at the doctor and said:

"_I tried to tell him, smoking and gasoline don't go together, but he didn't listen...Freddy never listens..."_

As they waited for news, Nancy turned and looked at Vic and as he thought how beautiful she was, how young and unchanged she was and how she would always be his first love, she asked him a question.

"What will happen when Freddy gets out of here?"

Vic shrugged.

"I don't know."

And he tried to choose his words carefully; the doctor had already said to Nancy that her boyfriend was critical...

"Nancy, he's got terrible burns. He might not make it."

And he lowered his voice:

" I know it was part of the deal that he had to be punished for their murders but I'm not so sure your friends thought this through when they made him burn, he's critical. _He could die and you need to be ready for that_."

Nancy looked into his eyes and as she gave a sob.

"No, I can't lose him now! I got him out of there, I got him back here because I needed to be free and so did he! I never knew he would have to pay a price like this but I can't lose him, Vic!"

And Vic put his arm around her again, wishing he could stop her tears from falling.

"Honey, I'm sorry but I don't think he's going to live."

Nancy blinked and more tears ran down her face.

"He _has_ to." She whispered, _"For us."_

And again Vic felt his stomach turn over at the thought of Nancy, beautiful cousin Nancy and Freddy Krueger becoming a romantic pairing she referred to as _Us_...

Vic pulled her a little closer, keeping his arm around her as he clung to the hope that the doctor had been right about Krueger's chances of survival being slim, "No matter what happens," He promised her, "I'll take care of you. I mean it Nancy, you can come and live with me."

And Nancy gave him a hug and then managed a brief smile but as she spoke again her voice was still cracked with tears.

"Thank you so much, Vic. We really need you."

"_You_ need me." He repeated, "I can't see Freddy coming out of the hospital for a _long _time."

And Nancy looked into his eyes.

"We need you." She repeated, "Me _and_ the baby. _I'm pregnant. It's Freddy's_. "

And Vic stared at her, feeling too shocked to speak and even too shocked to get up from the chair, find the men's room and throw up down a toilet all over again.

But Nancy didn't know he felt that way as she explained the rest:

"_That was why I had to get out of his Hell. And he had to get out too, so we could be together, but he had to let go of the demon first. He has to live, Vic – he's got so much to live for now he's mortal again. I'm having his baby..."_


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

_Time had passed by._

Vic had got used to Nancy living with him.

He had even got used to the thought that, although Trish had been killed in the bathroom, he could bear to live in his own house again.

He didn't have the main bedroom any more; he had moved out to the other bedroom and let Nancy have his old room and the hated en suite bathroom that went with it.

Nancy was seven months pregnant now and sometimes, he actually _liked_ the situation, especially when they went out shopping together and did normal stuff that made him so happy simply to be with Nancy.

_But it wasn't just him and Nancy._

It was him and Nancy and the baby..._and Freddie._

Back when he had first thought about Freddy and Nancy together, after Freddy had been brought through to the real world, Vic had felt sick to the pit of his stomach to think of Krueger and Nancy together.

The thought still sickened him but he was learning to live with it now... he was learning to live with it because he had to:

_He still loved Nancy._

_He couldn't have turned his back and walked away if he'd tried._

And when he had thought about leaving, all he had to was remember Harvey was just across the street - he would never be able to live this close to him and see so much of him again if he moved away.

He wasn't about to lose Harvey any more than he would lose Nancy, because although he couldn't be with either of them, he loved them both.

He was still uneasy around Freddy. He was sure that he always would be, even though, true to Nancy's friend's prediction, he was a threat to no one any more.

The first time he had seen Freddy after the burning, Nancy had been sobbing at his bedside. Freddy had burns all over his body, his right hand had been amputated and as Vic had looked at him he had calmly reasoned that at least he would never be able to put on that glove again...

_But Freddy was home now._

Before Freddy had come home, Vic had spent cozy evenings with Nancy, talking about plans for when the baby arrived. He had gone along with her for her baby scans and been surprised to see a very human and tiny, _perfect_ little boy inside her, shown clearly by 3D imagery.

He had, for a brief time, imagined what it would have been like if the baby had been his, if Nancy had been his wife...

And then Freddy had started to recover and suddenly he was here in the house, spending most of his time upstairs in the room he shared with Nancy.

And he was still here:

_Freddy Krueger was in his house._

That thought ran through his mind as he sat down stairs and watched the TV flicker and wondered what Nancy was doing up there.

He had, on occasion, heard sounds coming from that bedroom and by the way Freddy had given a deep sigh and Nancy had said she loved him, he had understood what was going on and once again fought a wave of nausea.

It wasn't the kind of thing he wanted to wake up to in the morning; hearing Nancy making love with Freddy though the wall...

He stopped thinking about what Nancy might be doing up there and turned his attention back to the TV, but his thoughts stayed on Krueger because having that former monster under his roof was driving him slowly insane...

* * *

Eventually Vic got up and quietly made his way up the stairs.

The bedroom door was ajar and he peered in, remaining silent as Nancy sat at Freddy's bedside and gently wound the bandage around a healing burn that covered the back of his left hand.

"You're almost healed up now." Nancy said quietly and she secured the bandage.

And Freddy, whose burns were not as severe as the dream demon but all the same had left white, uneven skin covering his face that resembled spider webs, looked into her eyes.

"Thank you Nancy." He whispered, and they looked at each other for a moment, then emotion overwhelmed Nancy as she gently put her arms around him.

"I love you, Freddy." She said tenderly.

And Freddy, who had made no move to respond to this, finally gave in and showed his true feelings as his lips brushed against hers and they shared a kiss.

As he pulled back she smiled.

"It's about time you remembered you're human again. It's okay to show your feelings now, Freddy. I'm going to make sure you do. I'm going to tell you that I love you every single day."

And Freddy's hand moved slowly, reaching out and briefly touching her swollen stomach, then he smiled back at her.

"I didn't think I could tolerate living like this." He said in a hoarse voice as he spoke using scorched vocal chords, "But you make it all worthwhile."

And Nancy leaned closer and whispered softly to him.

Vic didn't catch what she said but it sounded sweet and tender and it made him want to throw up.

He went back downstairs again and pretended to watch TV while he waited for Nancy to finally leave Freddy's side, because he hated it when she left him alone too long – _it just made him loathe Krueger even more..._

* * *

Finally, Nancy came back downstairs.

She sat beside him on the sofa and Vic felt a little better; there was not much he looked forward to with each new day but spending time with Nancy was something that always felt special – and Freddy being laid up in bed while he suffered the long process of recovering from his burns meant that they would have many evenings alone together like this.

He hadn't thought much past the next few months; he knew when Freddy was able to get out of bed and became more active, he would want to keep out of his way.

Vic knew it would hurt him, break his heart all over again to even _think_ of leaving Nancy, especially as it sickened him to think of her starting a family with Krueger - but there was nothing he could do about it.

He had spent a lot of time over at Harvey's house and he was thinking about perhaps moving in with him and Mel, using the excuse that Nancy and Freddy and the baby needed their own time together, to get used to being a family - that was his excuse and once he used it he knew he could always extend his stay at Harvey's and simply never go back – but his heart would still ache for Nancy. He couldn't deny it and every time he thought about a way out he felt ripped in two painfully different directions and neither direction really offered him a life with someone he loved:

_It was true that Harvey would certainly welcome him closer in his life._

_But Harvey loved his wife._

_And if he stayed where he was, he would always be close to Nancy..._

Nancy _and_ Freddie...

There was no way out of this situation without winding up sad and alone and pining for Harvey or pining for Nancy.

Losing both of them was unbearable to think about.

And so he decided to do nothing, even if it would drive him crazy in the end.

_But the strange thing about going crazy was, he didn't actually know he was crazy until he finally snapped..._

Nancy hadn't been sitting next to him on the sofa for no more than twenty minutes.

She had leaned back and given a tired sigh and closed her eyes briefly, and then opened them again as she remembered something.

"Oh no, I forgot to give Freddy an extra pillow...he's going to need that when he falls asleep, he can't lie flat at night because of his burns.."

Vic got up from the sofa.

"_I'll go."_

He heard Nancy thank him but he said nothing in reply as he left the room.

* * *

Vic went up the stairs and along the hall and opened the bedroom door.

Freddy was in bed and looked drowsy, he guessed he was already half asleep from the pain relief he had been on ever since he'd come out of the hospital; as he turned his head and looked at him, Vic could still see he was the same man who had once been the dream demon even though his features were now human and this man was very much alive.

"Nancy said you wanted another pillow."

"Thanks Vic." Freddy said quietly, avoiding the gaze of the man who looked at him so often as if he wished he had died from his burns.

Vic turned his back and lifted a pillow from the top of a blanket box at the foot of the bed.

"I can't pretend I like you." He admitted, "But I know Nancy loves you. And I saw what her friends did to you... it's not for me to decide if any of this is right or wrong."

And he fluffed up the pillow and stood next to Krueger.

"But I do know one thing." Vic said to him in a low voice, _"I know you've got no right to a second chance."_

And he shoved the pillow onto Freddy's face, holding it firm as he weakly struggled.

As he struggled and Vic smothered him, Vic smiled, recalling the freaky nightmare where Freddy had tricked him into thinking he had killed Trish:

_It was his own fault - Freddy had turned him on to killing..._

As Freddy's body went limp, Vic put the pillow on top of the others and straightened up the covers.

Then he left the room and closed the door behind him.

* * *

Nancy was still watching the TV when he went back downstairs and sat beside her.

She glanced at him and briefly smiled and he smiled too and he was still looking at her after she looked away.

Nancy frowned as she turned back to him, feeling a little uncomfortable because there was something about the way her cousin was looking at her and it was making her feel weird...

"Why do you keep looking at me?" She asked him.

Vic had been relaxing with his arm over the back of the chair and he lowered it now, stroking a lock of her hair as he looked into her eyes.

"_I hope you and me can still get along okay after what I've done."_ He said, _"Because we both know you need a man in your life and it's not Freddy, not that burned up cripple who used to be a dream demon."_

And Nancy's eyes grew wider as she stared at him in horror, seeing something cold in his eyes that she wished she had seen before; it was almost as if the mask had slipped and now she was seeing the _real _Vic Fox for the first time...

Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"What do you mean, Vic? What have you done?"

Vic didn't even blink.

"_I've just killed your boyfriend."_ He said calmly, _"I put a pillow over Freddy's face."_

Nancy stared at him in horror.

And then Vic was thrown forward and landed hard on the floor as Freddy burst through the sofa, plunging his sharpened blades through Vic's chest.

_The dream demon was back._

_Vic was fighting him even as Freddy Krueger was twisting his blades deep inside him and ripping out his guts._

* * *

"_VIC!"_ Nancy yelled.

And Vic took in a gasp of air and snapped his eyes open.

He was pinned to the sofa by his wrists and Nancy was holding him.

He breathed heavily, looking at her with terrified eyes.

"_He's...he's dead...he's killing me..."_

And then he looked down at his unmarked shirt:

_No blood stains, no rips or tears..._

Nancy let go of him.

"It's okay now." She said quietly, "I never should have let you fall asleep in front of the TV like that; we both noticed you were getting drowsy – I'll get your meds and then I think you should go to bed."

Vic's heart was still racing as he nodded and took in another breath.

As Nancy left the room he sat up straight and looked around: it was early evening, the lamp was on and the soft glow of it had made him feel too comfortable sitting here next to Nancy...

Nancy _and_ Freddy.

Fred Krueger was very much alive, of course he was:

He was sitting in the armchair near the TV and he turned and his scarred face twisted into a smile and Vic was sure the malice he saw in his eyes had nothing to do with the way that dream freaked him out; he knew, he knew _all_ about his nightmares...

"_What's the matter Vic?"_ He said darkly_, "Bad dreams?"_

And Vic nodded and said nothing in reply.

Nancy came back with his meds and a glass of water and Vic took the pill and went upstairs to his room, where he closed the door and locked it and then lay back on his bed with the light on.

Vic couldn't sleep the dark any more.

As he lay there he closed his eyes and gave a weary sigh as he thought about how he was stuck in an impossible situation:

_If he left, he would miss Nancy._

_If he moved away, he would miss Harvey._

To lose them both was unthinkable, and so he had stayed, even though living under the same roof as Krueger gave him bad dreams every time he slept without his meds - and because of his sleep problem, he never knew _when_ he would fall asleep...

He guessed those nightmares would always be there even though Freddy wasn't the dream demon any more; in Vic's dreams that demon would always be there, Freddy would always get him, even though now it was only a dream.

And that was how it would always be:

_Even though the demon was gone, as long as bad dreams existed, at least in the mind of Vic Fox, there would always be a boogeyman called Freddy Krueger..._

The End.


End file.
